Racing News Digest

Jaime McMurray won the Amp Energy 500 Talladega Superspeedway but not before cars started wrecking and flipping. This was McMurray’s first win since the second Daytona race in 2007. 86 races since his last victory.

“Anytime you come to Talladega, you seem to have a 50:50 shot at finishing one of these races, and fortunately we rode around the back at the beginning after getting wrecked in the spring race,” the winner said.
“With 80 to go, we made our way to the front,” McMurray added. “It was hard to make progress when the cars would get two and three wide, and I just happened to get lucky to be in the right lane at the right time. When teammate Matt Kenseth came up behind me, he was a huge help; if it had been someone else, they would hang you out. “It has been a long time since I won, and I can’t believe it is here again.”
Hanging around the back of the field didn’t seem difficult for McMurray, who was joined by point leader Jimmie Johnson. “Jimmie (Johnson) usually makes the right decisions, so I just rode around, even though it was hard to do. I used a little patience, too, and were able to get to the front when I needed to.”

So a big congrats to Jaime McMurray. Also it was Ford’s first win in 30 races since Matt Kenseth won at Daytona and the following week at California.

NACSCAR implemented a “no bump drafting or touching” rule for the corners at Talladega. This caused for some very boring racing at times. Or at least some thought so. I would have to agree for the most part but there were times when it did get exciting especially as we drew closer to the end of the race.

But with only about 5 laps to go Ryan Newman went up, bump drafted his teammate Tony Stewart which caused a crazy chain reaction. Newman was then plowed in the back by Marcos Ambrose. Not really Ambroses fault as I believe this he was hit from behind as well.

This caused Newman to loose it and start spinning across the track in front of on coming traffic. He was the clipped by Kevin Harvick and sent going down the track backwards which caused his rear end to flip up. He went airborne all the way over and landed on Harvick’s hood.

After that he took off up the track on his lid, smashed into the wall, back down to the grass where he did some more flipping and landed up side down. It took crews quite awhile to get him out. First they had to flip the car over and then cut away the roof.

Newman was Ok and was scored finishing 36th.

Then on the green/white/checkered that followed Mark Martins day got ruined when he ended up getting flipped over. And it was pretty instantaneously. He got clipped and was flipping as a result of Kurt Busch spinning and causing a whole lot of trouble.

Mark Martin is shown as finishing in 28th.

Jimmie Johnson got a 6th place finish after cautiously hanging out in the back all day. That turned out to be the right move for him. His 6th place finish and Mark Martin’s end of the race wreck allowed Jimmie to once again gain points on the Martin who is second in the points.

And it wasn’t just a couple of points. Jimmie jumped from having a 118 points lead to now insuring that he will still be in the lead after next the next race with a 184 point advantage over Martin.

Kasey Kahne, Greg Biffle and Jimmie Johnson were the only Chase drivers to finish in the top 12.

Denny Hamlin blew and engine and had to suffer with a 38th position finish.

Kurt Busch spun early in the race with a flat tire after getting bumped real hard on the left rear quarter panel causing it to cut his tire. But he recovered very well and even came back from a 2 lap deficit to be up front contending again. That is until his end of the race spin causing him to finish 30th.

Tony Stewart’s day ended with Newman’s crash. After Newman bumped him and then was bumped himself, Newman was forced back into Stewart which caused him to hit the wall very hard and end his day.

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