Roush Fenway Wins, Joe Gibbs Racing Bends Rules
Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Kasey Kahne Losing Ground In Chase
Aug 18, 2008
Roush Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards was the story of the weekend at Michigan, as he swept both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series events. With his win in the Nationwide Series race, Edwards continues to shrink the points lead of current points leader Clint Bowyer. In fact, he has cut Bowyer’s lead to 113 points. It was not that long ago when Edwards was over 250 points behind Bowyer.
In the Sprint Cup Series, Edwards is the only driver that has been able to keep up with Kyle Busch. Edwards led 84 of the 200 laps paced around the 2-mile speedway en route to his fifth win of the 2008 season. He pulled away from Busch, David Ragan, and Greg Biffle on the final restart with two laps to go.
“On that restart…Kyle is very good on restarts. I knew he was going to hang back and get a run up on my bumper. I wasn’t going to let him do that.”
Edwards’ buoyancy is at an all-time high as we edge closer to the Chase for the Championship.
“We didn’t have enough for that 99 there at the end. We weren’t able to get through the center of the corner as fast as Carl could,” conceded Busch.
It was a stellar day for Roush Fenway Racing as a whole. All five Roush Fenway drivers posted a top ten finish. David Ragan finished third, Greg Biffle finished fourth, Matt Kenseth was fifth, and Jamie McMurray rounded out the top ten.
It was an exasperating day for several Chase for the Championship bubble boys. Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, and Denny Hamlin all lost ground in the race to the Chase. Gordon finished 42nd after he cut a tire while making contact with teammate Jimmie Johnson. Both Denny Hamlin and Kasey Kahne encountered mechanical failures. They finished 39th and 40th respectively. Gordon falls to ninth in the standings, just 82 points ahead of the co-thirteenth place drivers Clint Bowyer and David Ragan. Kahne is eleventh in the standings, 47 points ahead of Bowyer and Ragan. Hamlin drops to twelfth in the standings, with only a 26 points cushion.
Hamlin even said that he and his team did not deserve to be in the Chase for the Championship following his premature departure.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Nationwide teams will face stiff penalties this week after NASCAR officials found a magnet placed beneath the accelerator. The magnets manipulated the outcome of post-race chassis dynamometer tests. It lessens the horsepower created because it does not allow the cars to fully wide open. Many competing teams and drivers have bemoaned the horsepower advantage as Joe Gibbs Racing as utterly dominated the Nationwide Series in 2008. Drivers Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, and Joey Logano have combined for 14 wins in 25 races. In fact, last month, Clint Bowyer claimed that ‘a monkey could win in the 20 car’.
"It was a really, really poor decision by some of our key guys at JGR. I want to apologize to NASCAR, to our partners, to Toyota guys. A couple of guys chose to make a decision there that really impacts all of us," said J.D. Gibbs.
Quote of the week
Tony Stewart on competing against his new teammate and employee Ryan Newman
"The competition side will probably be rougher with us going fishing than anything. The first time he gets me in a boat and gets me out about 50 feet and says, 'All right, we're fishing for paychecks today,' I'm swimming back. If I drown, you guys will know what happened."
