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Guard This: Casey Mears wins Coca-Cola 600

Casey Mears, driving the National Guard Chevy on Memorial Day 2007 and daringly running on fumes, takes NASCAR’s marathon event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and scores his first NASCAR NEXTEL Cup victory.

JJ Yeley finished second and Kyle Petty was third (yes, you read that right.) For 6 of the top 10 drivers, it was their best finish of 2007.

Oh, what a night.

Multi-car pileups, spinouts, and the difficulties of adjusting cars and drivers from a hot, slick sunny daytime track to a cool, grippy nighttime track (for 400 laps/600 miles) kept things interesting. Pole winner Ryan Newman (engine failure) and runner-up Kurt Busch (crash) both DNF’d the race.

The Toyota teams finally found some power, as the Brian Vickers Red Bull Camry led tonight’s race four times for a total of 76 laps (one press room wag joked, “A Toyota is leading and it’s not even a truck race.”) Vickers recorded Toyota’s first top-five finish in NEXTEL Cup competition while also wrestling with a power steering failure.

“Right now, everything hurts,” said Vickers. “My arms, my elbow — 600 miles is a long night and it’s even longer without any power steering.”

Hendrick Motorsports driver Casey Mears did well all day and into the evening, but ultimately it was a daring call by his crew chief Darian Grubb to conserve fuel and not pit that was the key to success. It was an emotional victory for the racing Mears family, which includes four-time Indy 500 winner, Uncle Rick Mears.

Casey Mears, long overshadowed by his more successful Hendrick Motorsports teammates, was thrilled and overwhelmed in Victory Lane.

“I can’t believe it. Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me look around to make sure what it looks like. The team just did an awesome job. I’ve got to thank Darian [Grubb, crew chief.] He made an awesome call and I tried to conserve fuel the best I could.”

It was very refreshing to listen to 2nd and 3rd place finishers Yeley and Petty in their post-race interviews. They had no problem evaluating some media questions as “silly,” and they seem to have a good balance with regard to racing and having a life. Petty gave a classy tribute to winner Mears and then acknowledged that his 46 years and 797 career starts have probably made him a bit less obsessive than others.

“In all honesty, it’s just a race. We didn’t change the world tonight, but it feels good to come back and race with these guys….it’s a team effort,” said Petty. “We’ve really struggled with our pit crew and they stepped up huge. We had a top 10 car all night. I couldn’t run with Jimmie Johnson or Tony Stewart; there was no way. It took a team to beat those guys and our team beat ‘em.”

A few multi-car wrecks changed the tenor of the race. Early on, Greg Biffle hit the wall and Joe Nemechek had to take his smoking car No. 13 to the garage. Then, on the restart from that, the tread flew off of Jimmie Johnson’s left rear tire and all sorts of crashing ensued, including Sauter, Marlin, Sadler, Rudd, Montoya, Bowyer, McMurray, Stewart, Harvick, Blaney, Jeff Green, Mark Martin and Gilliland.

Around 10 laps later (Lap 63) Jeff Gordon slammed into the wall and then was drilled by AJ Allmendinger (Gordon has failed to finish the last five races here at LMS.) At this point, the garage and the infield medical center were hopping. Drivers were all OK, but they still had to be checked out, and many of the cars eventually came back out of the garage to take a few more laps and pick up some more points when possible.

The rest of the cautions were assorted wall slaps, flats and debris incidents. Toyota driver Jeremy Mayfield had a very good night overall, and wins the Best Spin Award for his complete turnaround across both grass and track, without hitting anyone. Heck, it does say “360″ on his hood, for sponsor 360 OTC.

At the end, it seemed that Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. all had a chance to win, but Stewart and Junior had to stop for a little gas and Johnson’s team dropped a lug nut in their pit.

Casey Mears just had to hang on for the win.

There were 29 lead changes among 15 drivers, and 13 cautions for a total of 82 laps. Average speed was 130.22 mph.

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