{"id":4866,"date":"2011-04-17T20:58:23","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T01:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=9076"},"modified":"2011-04-17T21:15:02","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T02:15:02","slug":"nscs-race-recap-johnson-wins-wild-finish-talladega","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/nscs-race-recap-johnson-wins-wild-finish-talladega\/","title":{"rendered":"NSCS Race Recap: Johnson Wins In Wild Finish At Talladega"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TALLADEGA, Ala. \u2014 In a wild, three-wide, six-car finish at Talladega Superspeedway, Jimmie Johnson nipped Clint Bowyer by a record-tying .002 seconds to win Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Aaron\u2019s 499 race.<\/p>\n<p>With a push from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., Johnson surged past Bowyer about six inches from the finish line. The finish tied Ricky Craven\u2019s victory over Kurt Busch at Darlington in 2003 for the closest since the introduction of electronic timing and scoring in 1993.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Kl3pUWm_Q-s\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The victory was Johnson\u2019s first of the season and the 54th of his career. Jeff Gordon ran third and Earnhardt was fourth.<br \/>\n <!--more--><br \/>\nKevin Harvick, who was pushing Richard Childress Racing teammate Bowyer, finished fifth. Roush Fenway Racing teammates Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle finished sixth and seventh, and Mark Martin, who spent the afternoon in tandem with Hendrick teammate Gordon, finished eighth.<\/p>\n<p>A wreck on Lap 140 wiped out two of the top championship contenders, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch. Contact between Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Joey Logano and Busch triggered the incident. Pushed by Logano, Busch spun to the inside and wiped out Kenseth in the process.<\/p>\n<p>The cars of AJ Allmendinger and Denny Hamlin also sustained damage but were able to continue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was just going straight on the bottom following Kurt (Busch) and got hit in the right-rear and put me straight in the wall,\u201d Kenseth said. \u201cI don\u2019t really know what happened to cause that.  Obviously, something happened beside me that got somebody into my right rear.  I didn\u2019t even know it was coming, just driving straight hoping to miss the rest of the bullets and get to the end and just got in a wreck.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the lead pack of cars headed into Turn 3 on Lap 90, fire erupted beneath David Ragan\u2019s No. 6 Ford. As the field began to slow, contact from Kurt Busch\u2019s No. 22 Dodge sent the No. 2 of Penske Racing teammate Brad Keselowski hard into the outside wall.<\/p>\n<p>The Toyota of Kasey Kahne and the Fords of Marcos Ambrose and Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne were collected in the melee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was one of the harder hits I\u2019ve taken, just because it was so much of a frontal impact across the track, off the apron, all the way to the wall,\u201d Bayne said. \u201cI don\u2019t know who got us.  I saw the 6 blowing up in front of us, so I keyed up the mic. I\u2019m like, \u2018It\u2019s getting crazy in front of me, Greg\u2019\u2014I was on Greg Biffle\u2019s radio at the time. As soon as I said that they blew up, Greg got off of me because I yelled, \u2018Blowing up, blowing up.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe got off of me and at the same time the 2 car got hooked somehow. I don\u2019t know that they triggered each other; I just saw the 2 get hooked at the same time the 6 was on fire. He (Keselowski) goes across the track, I saw him hit the outside wall, but then I don\u2019t know who caught us in the right rear and sent us. But I thought we were safe. I was like, \u2018Man, that was close,\u2019 and about the time I said that I was headed toward the outside wall. So not a fun ride.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TALLADEGA, Ala. \u2014 In a wild, three-wide, six-car finish at Talladega Superspeedway, Jimmie Johnson nipped Clint Bowyer by a record-tying .002 seconds to win Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Aaron\u2019s 499 race. With a push from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr., Johnson surged past Bowyer about six inches from the finish line. The finish [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[15775],"class_list":["post-4866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}