Toyota officials on Wednesday identified the Roush Fenway Racing part that owner Jack Roush said was found in a Toyota team's possession during a Sprint Cup post-race teardown as a spring. Jim Aust, the president and chief executive officer of Toyota Racing Development, said once the part was found to belong to RFR that it was returned. He was uncertain how the part, discovered on a table with other Toyota parts, got there or from which team it came. "I don't understand the whole procedure when a teardown happens," said Aust, referring to a post-race process in which several cars are broken down by NASCAR inspectors. "The only thing I know is it wound up with parts we had and [which were] returned to Roush. "It's unfortunate it happened the way it did. It wasn't anything intentional. There's no reason to be done intentional. I have no idea how it happened to begin with."
Roush Fenway president Geoff Smith said the part in question was not a spring, but he would not elaborate. No one at RFR has identified which Toyota team had the part. "Jack is the only one to talk to at this time and he presently doesn't want to make any additional comments," Smith said.
For those fans affectionately known as Hendrick Haters, this has not been a banner year. So how good are the Hendrick cars? In a season dominated by Chevrolet, Hendrick's top three are clearly the class of the field. Hendrick has five wins in eight races, including a sweep of the COT starts, and looks to be unstoppable
How much longer before the buzz from the Ford and / or Dodge camps becomes a full-throat roar, wanting a change here or a tweak there to help even the competition? The Ford camp remains all Roush all the time. The Dodge folks must be wondering if they'll catch a break before it's too late.
Jeff Burton burst onto the scene in 1997 when he finished fourth in the points. He finished 1998 and 1999 fifth in those respective points races. That's enough right there to rank him as the 10th best driver in the 90's.
On April 7, 1997 Jeff burton racked up his first race win in the Interstate Batteries 500 which was the inaugural Winston Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway.
On March 21, 1999 Burton won one of the zaniest races in Winston Cup history. His crumpled Ford lay in a smoking heap at Darlington raceway as rain fell. Burton had been involved in an accident on lap 163 but managed to keep the car moving and in the lead until the caution could be thrown and the rain drops began to fall. The race never restarted and Burton was awarded the win.
Jeff Gordon won the pole for Sunday's race in Friday's qualifying. During practice on Saturday, however, the No. 24 Chevrolet was too loose for Gordon's liking. Consequently, the team adjusted the car's suspension setup.
But the weather changed. Cloudy skies greeted fans and racers in Fontana. It was cooler Sunday. Consequently Gordon's adjustments went too far.
The mood appeared light as drivers headed into the first turn with Gordon on the pole and Kasey Kahne in second. By the time they reach Turn 2, Kahne left Gordon behind.
Jimmie Johnson started in the middle of the pack, but quickly moved up and ran his No. 48 Chevy in the top 10 most of the day.
On lap 19, David Ragan spun out, which brought out the third caution in less than 20 laps. Kahne, Kevin Harvick and Gordon were among those who pitted, giving the lead to Kyle Busch, followed by Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth. Gordon adjusted the track bar and air pressure in the tires to get the setup right, and fell as far back as 33rd place.
Kenseth, who won last year's race for owner Jack Roush, led after 125 laps, leading Gordon to the start line on the restart following a yellow flag.
Kenseth and Gordon actually touched side by side about lap 136. They've had issues before. Gordon, after getting spun out by Kenseth last year at Bristol, shoved Kenseth after the race. A few weeks later, Gordon spun out Kenseth at Chicago.
Tony Stewart had a memorable lap 144, when he was third, behind Kenseth and Gordon. Gordon went low to attempt to pass Kenseth, and Stewart went even lower to pick off Gordon in the backstretch. He then passed Kenseth before reaching the start-finish line.
At the stripe on lap 175, Kenseth remained the leader in a Ford owned by Jack Roush. Gordon was running second.
Kenseth led 133 of 250 laps, but after making a green-flag stop on Lap 196 he found himself about two seconds behind Jimmie Johnson, an El Cajon native. He might have bettered his third-place finish if not for a bit of bad luck. Johnson built a 2.6-second lead over Kenseth at the 225-lap mark, then out came a yellow flag and misfortune for the defending series champion. The reason for the yellow: Debris.
“We had a nice lead there,” Johnson said. “And then, the wonderful debris caution came out. I think we all saw it coming.”
Was Johnson questioning the validity of that yellow? You bet. “If anyone has seen the debris, I would like to know what it was,” he said. “I think they had five trucks looking for it.” It looked like a show caution to me.
All of the leaders would have had to make pit stops anyway. Now, they would all come under yellow and at the same time. Johnson took four tires, and so did Kenseth. Kenseth’s crew got it done while Johnson’s had a slight misstep and got their driver back out in the fifth spot.
When they excited the pits on lap 228, Kenseth was the new leader, followed by Jeff Burton, Harvick, Gordon and Johnson.
Harvick’s charge was blunted when David Reutimann’s crash on Lap 243 brought out a yellow and then a red flag. After a delay of just more than 15 minutes, as the field lined up for a four-lap race to the finish, Harvick had a flat left-front tire and had to pit.
That left Burton in second as the green flew, but he spun his tires on the restart and got passed by Gordon for second and Johnson for third.
Gordon finished a second ahead of teammate Johnson. Kenseth's Ford finished 0.679 of a second ahead of Gordon's Chevrolet.
"I'm very happy with that second-place finish," Gordon said. "We started on the pole and we faded early. We just overtightened the car from practice. I think the overcast really hurt us more than we thought it was going to. It took a while for us to make those adjustments, and once we did, we were a top-three or four car all day."
Gordon's finish left him third in points. "I think it's extremely important (to get off to a good start)," Gordon said. "I know it's early in the season, but we're trying to build a championship right now, not just with points, but with the team."
"It wasn't a bad day," Johnson said. "The mysterious debris caution cost us, and then we had some issues on pit road. But it was solid. We had the speed. We just had that stop at the end that kind of hurt us."
The top-five finish came at a good time for Johnson. After finishing 39th in the season-opening Daytona 500 last week, the reigning Nextel Cup champion vaulted into 15th place in the points standings with Sunday's third-place finish. "It's good to get some points back and get back going in the right direction," Johnson said.
Jack Roush was on the dais with his victorious driver, Kenseth, after Sunday's Auto Club (AAA) 500 at California Speedway, but Hendrick Motorsports had an equally successful day.
Mark Martin, who drives with Hendrick power for Ginn Racing moved to the top of the 2007 NEXTEL Cup point standings after the February 25th Auto Club 500 at California Speedway. Martin, driver of the #01 U.S. Army Chevrolet, finished 4th in the race and moved up one spot to lead the standings by 5 points over Burton. Harvick, who led the standings after last week's race, finished 17th in the race and dropped three spots to 4th in the points.
Kyle Busch finished ninth.
Oh yeah, don't forget. The fries are free at Arby's today. Just show the results of the race and thank Matt.
All manner of statistics can be used to show how thoroughly Chevrolet teams dominated the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. Chevrolet won 23 of the 36 points races, the most races Chevrolet has won in one season in stock-car racing history. Chevrolets led at least 30 laps in all but one of last year's Cup races. Dodges failed to lead that many laps 21 times, and Fords fell short of that threshold 14 times. Most telling, though, might be this: Only four times all year -- never in the season's final 21 points races -- did the best Chevrolet fail to finish at least second.
What that means is that Chevrolet's teams were in the hunt week in and week out, and the fact that Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart each won five races helped sustain the manufacturer's conversion rate as it won a fourth straight manufacturer's championship. On the eve of a new season, it's hard to see where the gap between Chevrolet and the rest of the field, even one including a new factor in Toyota, will change in 2007. Only one team, Robby Gordon's single-car effort, defected from Chevrolet to Ford after last season, and only one 2006 race-winning driver, Brian Vickers, left the "bow-tie brigade" to jump to Toyota. In the bargain, Chevrolet picked up Mark Martin from Ford for at least a partial schedule and replaced Vickers with Casey Mears at Hendrick Motorsports. Aside from that change in the No. 25 Chevrolets and the addition of Paul Menard in a third team at Dale Earnhardt Inc., the core teams in Chevrolet's NASCAR efforts -- Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing, Richard Childress Racing and DEI -- return with intact driver rosters for another shot at ruling the roost.
There are challenges. In addition to the arrival of the "car of tomorrow" for 16 races, Chevrolet teams also will be phasing in a newly approved engine package along with the Impala models that will be used in those 16 events. Still, in a year where unpredictability seems to be an overriding theme in the sport, the quality and continuity of Chevrolet's top teams makes it fully reasonable to expect another season in which Dodge, Ford and Toyota will do well to win as many races as a group as Chevrolet does on its own. Johnson's 2006 championship was the culmination of a five-year drive for his No. 48 team at Hendrick Motorsports, which now tries to become the first team to win consecutive titles since it did so in 1997-98 with Jeff Gordon.
"Last year, our guys really did a good job of staying focused on the job at hand," Johnson said of the challenge of repeating. "I think we do a good job after every practice session, qualifying session, every race, at not looking at too many outside influences. It's easy for us in some respects to stay focused. We just have that ability, and that's what our team is about." It has been more than five years since Jeff Gordon won a championship in 2001, his fourth title in seven years, and although Gordon made the Chase in the No. 24 Hendrick Chevrolet in 2006, he didn't win at least three races for the first time in 11 seasons.
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