The finish of the race is what many will be talking about. The No.24 and No.15 teams got into a fight in the garage.
A four-car accident on lap 312, triggered by Jeff Gordon intentionally wrecking Clint Bowyer, brought out the red flag and set up a green-white-checkered finish. And as a brouhaha between the teams of the two feuding drivers made the garage area crazy, the race’s final restart made things even crazier.
Jeff Burton spun Danica Patrick on the penultimate lap, sending Patrick into the outside retaining wall between turns three and four. After running well in 13th, Patrick’s No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet limped off the wall and down to the apron of the track and then along the frontstretch, all the while leaking oil from an oil line that ruptured during the crash.
But the caution flag was never thrown. The leaders raced down the backstretch and into turn three, only to discover, as race winner Kevin Harvick said, “There was more oil than there was asphalt.”
Harvick tip-toed off turn four and crossed the finish line first to take the win. Denny Hamlin followed, with polesitter Kyle Busch – who led four times for a race-high 237 laps – in third. Behind the trio was calamity, as cars spun in the oil and careened off each other.
Patrick’s car served as a proverbial ping-pong ball, and the No. 39 Quicken Loans/U.S. Army Chevy of SHR’s Ryan Newman was seemingly hit on every side as he slid to a fifth-place finish.
Smoke billowed. Tempers flared. Crewmen loaded up a host of busted racecars. It was a wild, wild race in the wild, wild West.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site generating millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Chicago Tribune.com, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports
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