INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Years ago, as a garage rat at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Paul Menard dreamed of winning a race at the vaunted Brickyard.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the dream came true. In a season full of improbable first-time winners in NASCAR\u2019s foremost races, Menard, 30, stretched his fuel mileage and held off charging Jeff Gordon to win the Brickyard 400 at the 2.5-mile track.
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\nThe victory was Menard\u2019s first as a Sprint Cup driver, and it catapulted him into the conversation for a wild-card berth in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Gordon, who closed rapidly over the final five laps, crossed the finish line .725 seconds behind the season\u2019s fourth first-time winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first year here was 1989, that I can remember anyway\u2014I think I was here when I was 3 or 4 years old, too,\u201d said Menard, whose father, John Menard, has fielded IndyCars for a variety of drivers. \u201cI just spent a lot of time in the garage area. I didn\u2019t miss an Indy 500 from 1989 to 2003.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was here for the inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994. It\u2019s just a really special place for my family and myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regan Smith, who notched his first career win in the Showtime Southern 500 at Darlington in May, came home third, followed by Jamie McMurray, last year\u2019s Brickyard winner. Matt Kenseth ran fifth, and Tony Stewart salvaged a sixth-place result despite a litany of problems throughout the race.<\/p>\n
Greg Biffle, Mark Martin, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch completed the top 10.<\/p>\n
Smith, who counts Menard as one of his best friends, promised to attend Menard\u2019s victory celebration, just as Menard joined Smith after the victory in Darlington.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe always talks about coming up here,\u201d Smith said. \u201cHe always talks about how much he loves this place. I know if he had to highlight one race to get his first win, I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll tell you in a minute he couldn\u2019t be happier.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s cool. You only get one chance to get your first win. It\u2019s a special thing, especially when you do it here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menard joined Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne and Smith as first-time winners on NASCAR\u2019s biggest stages. Unlike Bayne, who is not running a full Cup schedule, and Smith, who is 26th in points, Menard put himself in position to claim one of the two wild-card spots available to the highest-ranking race winners in positions 11-20 in points.<\/p>\n
Menard improved five positions to 14th in the standings, passing polesitter David Ragan, who dropped three places to 16th after finishing 23rd Sunday. With six races left before the field for the Chase is set at Richmond, Denny Hamlin, Menard and Ragan are the only drivers in positions 11-20 with victories. Hamlin is 11th.<\/p>\n
Menard, in his first season with Richard Childress Racing, also is the first qualifier for the Sprint Summer Showdown, in which he and the winners of the next four Cup races will try to claim a $3 million bonus by winning Sept. 4 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The bonus will be split three ways, with $1 million each going to the driver, a fan and the driver\u2019s designated charity.<\/p>\n
Gordon, who won the inaugural Cup race at Indy in 1994, said Menard perhaps can savor his first win at the Brickyard even more than he did 17 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because he\u2019s been here so much as a kid experiencing Indy, he knows how special it is to compete here, let alone win here,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cSo I think the feelings are probably very similar. He probably has a greater appreciation for it than I did in \u201994, because while I was watching from a distance and my heroes were Indy 500 drivers, I wasn\u2019t in the garage like he was. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo he could probably appreciate it even more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notes: Ragan is the fourth driver to get his first Cup win this year. He won the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona on July 2. \u2026 The victory was the ninth straight at the Brickyard for Chevrolet. \u2026 Menard\u2019s crew chief, Slugger Labbe, picked up his fifth victory and added the Brickyard trophy to his marquee win in the 2003 Daytona 500, when he was crew chief for Michael Waltrip at Dale Earnhardt Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 Years ago, as a garage rat at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Paul Menard dreamed of winning a race at the vaunted Brickyard. On Sunday, the dream came true. In a season full of improbable first-time winners in NASCAR\u2019s foremost races, Menard, 30, stretched his fuel mileage and held off charging Jeff Gordon to win […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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-6552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6552","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=6552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}