Monday, February 29, 2016

The Frontstretch Newsletter: Jimmie Johnson Claims Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500; Equals Dale Earnhardt

THE FRONTSTRETCH NEWSLETTER
Presented by Frontstretch.com
The Best Seat at the Track, The Best View on the Net!
Feb. 29, 2016
Volume X, Edition XVIII

~~~~~~~~~~
NEW POSTING: SALES & BRANDING MANAGER

Frontstretch is seeking a dynamic, creative individual to head our sales team. The individual would be responsible for the following:
- Engaging new partners and taking the lead in brokering agreements for sales & advertising across all Frontstretch outlets: Website, Newsletter, Podcast, and video content
- Responding to exposure inquiries from potential advertisers
- Working with our social media team to enhance the marketing and branding experience for our advertising clients

The position will be a direct report to our Business and Financial Manager, a position that also will work closely with the Majority Owner and Social Media team. A fast-growing website whose writers have won multiple NMPA Awards, the Frontstretch is well-positioned for success in 2016 and has a healthy audience of over seven figures per year. The role, while initially commission-based offers a generous percentage and perks down the road for this startup company. Frontstretch management has, in many cases been in place for nearly a decade before becoming a for-profit website and we're excited to welcome the right person into this family atmosphere.

Interested parties should email tbowles81@yahoo.com with a short note on why they're interested and their current resume. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~
What to Watch: Monday

- Today, the teams are back in North Carolina (with the exception of Furniture Row Racing) to perform their changeover work before heading out to Las Vegas for week No. 1 of the Western Swing.  If anything of note breaks, we'll have it for you at Frontstretch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday's TV Schedule can be found here.
 
Top News
by the Frontstretch Staff

Jimmie Johnson Slides to Atlanta Win, Ties Dale Earnhardt with 76 wins

On Sunday, Kevin Harvick was the class of the field.  However, nothing says that you can't outsmart the best.  Jimmie Johnson short-pitted with 49 laps to go, then assumed a 14 second lead when Harvick pitted eight laps later.  Harvick proceeded to use his stuff up trying to catch up.  Johnson was able to hold on after a Green-White-Checker to take his fifth career win at Atlanta and his 76th overall, tying him with Dale Earnhardt for seventh in Sprint Cup history.  Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was second, followed by Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards.  Read more

Kyle Busch Wins Heads Up Georgia 250, First Atlanta Start Since 2014

Kyle Busch made his season debut in Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 18 in the XFINITY Series. Much of the opposition groaned.  They had every reason to as Busch led 119 of the 163 laps to take his 77th career XFINITY Series win.  Kyle Larson was second, followed by Erik Jones, Paul Menard and Ty Dillon.  Read more

John Hunter Nemechek Survives, Advances to Chase With Atlanta Win

On Saturday evening, Matt Crafton and Christopher Bell were the class of the field  However, both were eliminated in hard crashes late in the going.  After Bell crashed with just a few laps to go, John Hunter Nemechek inherited the lead and held on to take his second career win.  Cameron Hayley was second, followed by Timothy Peters, Daniel Hemric, and Grant Enfinger.  Read more


Have news for The Frontstretch?  Don't hesitate to let us know; email us at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com with a promising lead or tip.

~~~~~~~~~~
Chasing the Chase: Kyle Busch Nets Points Lead with Consistent Form
by Phil Allaway

Early in the season, substantial shifts in the points are commonplace.  It's usually up to six weeks before things work out.  Kyle Busch has put himself in good position to be there when the dust clears.  His second consecutive third-place finish has put him on top of the point standings through two races.  His advantage is three points over Martin Truex, Jr., who led laps on Sunday, but faded to a seventh-place finish.  Kevin Harvick is up one place to third in points after his sixth-place finish, but he's rather dejected that he managed to lead the most laps at Atlanta for the third straight year and not win.

Carl Edwards claimed his second consecutive fifth-place finish to start the season, which is good enough for fourth in points, one point behind Harvick.  Denny Hamlin and race winner Jimmie Johnson are tied for fifth.  For Johnson, he's up from 16th entering the race.  Hamlin never fully recovered after getting lapped to the first caution and finished 16th.  Kurt Busch was dominant early on, fell off, then recovered to finish fourth.  He is now seventh in points and has a five-point advantage on Joey Logano, who recovered from a commitment cone penalty to finish 12th.

Austin Dillon is ninth in points after finishing 11th.  Aric Almirola is up to tenth, although he technically didn't finish the race after crashing on the Green-White-Checker and crossing the line to take the white flag aflame.  He was credited with a 15th-place finish, the last driver one lap down.  Brad Keselowski is 11th in points after a ninth-place finish, while Matt Kenseth is up two places to 12th after an interesting run to 19th that included a black flag for a pit violation and the rare sight of the black flag with the white cross being shown, docking Kenseth a lap in the process.

Point Standings (1-16): 1) Kyle Busch 78, 2) Martin Truex, Jr. -3, 3) Kevin Harvick -4, 4) Carl Edwards -5, t-5) Denny Hamlin -8, t-5) Jimmie Johnson -8, 7) Kurt Busch -9, 8) Joey Logano -14, 9) Austin Dillon -15, 10) Aric Almirola -23, 11) Brad Keselowski -24, 12) Matt Kenseth -27, 13) Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. -28, 14) Kyle Larson -29, 15) Ryan Newman -30, t-16) Kasey Kahne -32, t-16) Paul Menard -32.

Race Winners: Denny Hamlin (Daytona), Jimmie Johnson (Atlanta)
~~~~~~~~~~

Letter of the Race: Sunday's Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 was brought to you by the letter "P," for Pit strategy.  That was the only reason why Jimmie Johnson ended up in Victory Lane on Sunday.  While Johnson was good, it was a contrarian move by Chad Knaus to pit Johnson early and give him a big lead on older tires that turned out to be the winning move.    - Phil Allaway

~~~~~~~~~~

Quotes to Remember: Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500
compiled by Phil Allaway

"Yeah, definitely a gutsy call. It was just a great team effort. The No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) car was awfully tough and it was going to take some strategy to get by him. When he told me to whip it as hard as I could there, I just felt like I was going to take too much life out of the tires. But, it worked. And I got rolling around the top and got to where I got this Lowe's Chevy in Victory Lane. I'm so happy for Hendrick Motorsports and for everybody at Chevrolet.

"It's such an honor [to tie Dale Earnhardt]. With the chaos at the end and the crash and wondering about overtime and how it worked these days, I kind of lost sight of that. I remembered it on my victory lap coming down, and I had to come by and throw a 'three' out the window to pay my respects to the man. There's a huge void in my career that I never had a chance to race with him, but at least I was able to tie his record." - Jimmie Johnson, race winner

"I loved it. We were sliding around and driving the hell out of the car. I had a blast. I had some good races there on the track with the No. 2 (Brad Keselowski) and the No. 18 (Kyle Busch) and a bunch of guys. Man, it was so much fun. And I post old pictures online all the time of the '80's and '90's and that's when racing was racing. That's when it was good. That's what they saw today.  So, I'd like to thank the Nationwide guys. We had a great car. It was fun to drive. It was hard, hard, hard, to drive; but man. I'm glad we didn't have a ton of restarts today because sometimes those don't really show the true ability of the car. You get lucky on some restarts and sometimes you don't, depending on the lane you're in. And a lot of times you can't make heads or tails of what to do. Just like at the end we gained a few spots and got lucky. But you ain't always going to be lucky. I've been on the other end of it where you lose spots in late, late restarts and you get so mad. But, there wasn't no debris cautions, those were legit ones today." - Dale Earnhardt, Jr., finished second

"About the two thirds mark of the race was pretty fun. It was [Dale Earnhardt, Jr.] and Brad [Keselowski] and me that were just battling back and forth and slide jobbing one another and high lane-ing it and cutting each other off and everything, so it was pretty fun. This package lends itself to that. Pretty good race I felt like – a lot harder than some of us may want it to be, but that makes it good for the drivers and the crew chiefs to have to work together to come out here and build a good package for themselves and a comfortable race car. We had that for much of the day, so I give a lot of credit to Adam Stevens (crew chief) and the guys. We weren't very good yesterday, but they definitely put their heads to the paper and made a good job last night adjusting on this thing for today." - Kyle Busch, finished third, on racing with Earnhardt Jr. and the package

"They just need to keep taking more [downforce]. This is real racing. We're driving hard. You can see the guys out here just digging for everything they're worth. I'm worn out. That's a tough race and just a lot of fun. I just can't thank NASCAR enough and Atlanta – don't ever pave this place – it's a perfect race track. I hope the fans enjoyed the show. The thing is, just know that in that car we're driving as hard as we can. And Thank ARRIS – all the folks from ARRIS that came out here. It's a top-five – we wanted to win this thing, but we'll keep working on it." - Carl Edwards, finished fifth

"We had issues about the last three runs. I had to start driving the car different. It just required a little bit different handling. And then we had a slow pit stop there. We got way behind and the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was way out front and I had to drive the car really hard and got the right rear burned up. We just didn't execute today but everybody on our Jimmy John's/Busch Chevrolet hung in there all day and we'll keep at it." - Kevin Harvick, finished sixth

"We seemed to have real good short-run speed, but not very good long-run speed and we didn't get a lot of short runs.  The ones we did, we were able to drive to the front and that was a lot of fun.  It was beautiful weather and a beautiful day for racing.  That race felt like I was in 1975.  That was kind of awesome.  I should grow my sideburns out after that one." - Brad Keselowski, finished ninth

"Our Ford EcoBoost Fusion was like I hoped it would be.  Practice felt good and I was hoping that was going to correlate over to the race and we were exactly where we thought we would be.  We weren't real good for the first 10 laps of a run, but really good at the end of the run.  We lost some track position there getting to pit road with the 95.  That's two weeks in a row they've gotten us on pit road, so hopefully they won't pit next to us next time.  But, other than that, we lost some track position there, where I feel like we may have got a seventh or eighth-place finish out of it, but, all in all, I'm really happy with all the hard work that these guys put in.  It's only one weekend.  I hope to get consistent with that and I'm looking forward to going to Vegas next week." - Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., finished tenth

"This was certainly not the finish that we had hoped for.  This race was a game in tire management.  The tire fall off caused our tires to slide all over the track and made it incredibly difficult to keep the car on the bottom.  Once we fell a lap down, it was so hard to get back on the lead lap with how challenging it was to pass in a loose car.  But we ran in the Top-20 all afternoon, and we had a competitive car.  It was disappointing to have a wreck on the last lap, especially with how hard our team worked, but I know that we'll be able to bounce back next week in Las Vegas." - Aric Almirola, finished 15th (Crashed out)

"I got black flagged for some type of pit road penalty and I didn't know it and pitted the lap they told me to do a pass through, but I guess they must have been – I'm assuming they were black flagging us before that and they pulled our card, so I never heard anything about it or at least saw the flag or anything, so I came when they told me to come and I guess they must have penalized us a couple laps or something. I don't really know. I haven't really seen it." - Matt Kenseth, finished 19th

"We had an OK car all day and we were just trying to find some balance.  Sometimes we were better than others and at the end we weren't the best.  We were gonna run 13th to 15th, which would have been an OK day.  I didn't know what happened initially, but I guess the 43 got a big run off the top and I was inside the 14 and got tagged in the back.  That's what they're telling me and, unfortunately, that sent me around, which kind of stinks.  We were just trying to salvage a decent day out of it and it just stinks to run all those laps and then get wrecked at the end of a race.  There are some things we can learn to go onto Vegas next week and we're excited to bounce back there." - Ryan Blaney, finished 25th

"They just kind of wrecked in front of me.  I had the car slowed down to where I felt like I was going the pace of the wreck.  It wasn't clear in front of me yet, but it was gonna be because it looked like he was gonna go to the bottom and somebody hit me from behind.  It was a frustrating way to end the day because it was a handful anyways.  At that point, we did have a position to race for, but you didn't want to risk anything.  We just wanted to bring it home in one piece and we didn't get to do that.  I have having a tore up race car, but maybe it will give us an opportunity to take a look at it and see what we can do to make it better." - Landon Cassill, finished 36th

Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager for Frontstretch.  He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.

~~~~~~~~~~

by Aaron Bearden

by Bryan Gable

by Beth Lunkenheimer

~~~~~~~~~
FRONTSTRETCH TRIVIA:

Q:  The 2002 Winston Cup season was a living nightmare for Travis Carter.  The bankruptcy of Kmart eviscerated his team.  By the time Las Vegas came around, the No. 66 of Todd Bodine was already in sponsor trouble.  The No. 26 of Joe Nemechek would follow shortly afterwards.  If you look at the results of the race, Bodine was sponsored by CSK Auto (Checker, Schucks and Kragen Auto Parts).  How did that deal come together?

Check back Tuesday for the answer, here in the Frontstretch Newsletter!

Friday's Answer:

Q:  For Ryan Newman, the 2003 Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 was a decent race.  He led some laps early on and was headed towards a top 10 finish.  Then, heck went down in the final laps.  What happened? 

A: Newman was running in sixth, nearly a half a lap down when he blew a left rear tire on the backstretch.  Newman spun his Dodge and hit the wall before coming to rest on the apron at the entrance of turn 3.  The crash can be seen here.

The crash resulted in the race ending under caution.  Newman was unable to continue and was credited with a 29th-place finish.  However, Newman did walk away from the crash.
~~~~~~~~~~
COMING TOMORROW

In The Frontstretch Newsletter:
We'll have breaking news from Monday and S.D. Grady returns with Sitting In The Stands: A Fan's View.

On Frontstretch.com:
Sean Fesko fills in for Danny Peters with Five Points to Ponder after Atlanta.
 -----------------------------
Talk back to the Frontstretch Newsletter!
Got something to say about an article you've seen in the newsletter? It's as easy as replying directly to this message or sending an email to editors@frontstretch.com. We'll take the best comments and publish them here! 
©2016 Frontstretch.com

--
--
Feel free to forward this newsletter if you have any friends who loves
NASCAR and great NASCAR commentary. They can subscribe to the Frontstetch by visiting http://www.frontstretch.com/notice/9557/.
 
If you want to stop your Frontstretch Newsletter subscription, we're sorry
to see you go. Just send an email to
TheFrontstretch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com from the address that you
recieve the Frontstretch Newsletter.

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Frontstretch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to thefrontstretch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Posted by Curious ... at 11:51 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment