Jimmie Johnson Survives All-Star Challenge
Written by John Davison · May 21, 2006
Jimmie Johnson, driving a car sponsored by the same corporate sponsor that paid for naming rights at the track, dominated the 2006 NASCAR NEXTEL All-Star Challenge after other leading cars crashed out. Johnson led 32 of the 90 laps in the race, dodging crashes that took out other cars while leading. Johnson’s win paid a total of $1,055,007. Kyle Petty, after being voted into the race in an online promotion, finished eighth, earning a large donation for his Victory Junction Gang Camp.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers gave the order to start engines for the 2006 edition of the NASCAR NEXTEL All-Star Challenge after a very brief delay for a light rain shower between the Open and the Challenge. Kasey Kahne led from the green for two laps before Jimmie Johnson, winner of the last four point races at Charlotte, took over the point. Kurt Busch followed in third, with Tony Stewart, reigning NEXTEL Cup champion, moving up to fourth as Ryan Newman had handling problems that dropped him steadily back in the field.
Jamie McMurray in the No. 26 Ford, got tapped by teammate Mark Martin and spun on the front straight, tapping the wall right at Start/Finish and pan caking the right side sheet metal. Dale Earnhardt Jr pitted during the caution, allowing the team to make their mandatory stop with seven crewmen available to change the four tires instead of having to use two to fuel the car. Michael Waltrip pitted with coolant spewing from his radiator, the crew pulling tape from the nose of the No. 55 Dodge.
As spotters around the track reported light rain, Jimmie Johnson pitted and Scott Riggs got spun on the front straight, cutting a tire. Jimmie Johnson got penalized for entering pit road too fast, earning a drive-through for the infraction. No caution resulted from Riggs’ spin and when the pit stops finished, Kyle Busch, dominant in last night’s Craftsman Truck Series race, headed Tony Stewart with Greg Biffle third, Matt Kenseth fourth and Kurt Busch fifth.
Stewart gained on Busch at the rate of about a third of a second a lap, as Jimmie Johnson, almost a lap behind the leaders, cut the margin by about 0.2 sec per lap. Kyle Busch’s tires appeared to come into their optimum temperature after only a handful of laps, because he started opening the gap over Stewart and Biffle.
After 33 laps, the caution came out again for Kurt Busch’s Dodge as smoke poured out of the car, bringing the field under yellow again. The caution allowed Jimmie Johnson to close his No. 48 Chevy up on the rest of the field as the light shower of rain appeared to get heavier, spotters in the turns reporting that the track was getting wetter. After lap 34, NASCAR pulled the field onto pit road and stopped them under a red flag for the weather.
Not a lot later, the engines got restarted and the cars pulled off pit road behind the pace car approaching the end of the first 40-lap segment. Following this segment will be a ten-minute pause. The two cautions in this segment have lasted four laps each, with the green coming out to start lap 38. Kyle Busch headed the field to the green with Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle battling for second, Kevin Harvick taking advantage of their struggle to move up to challenge for third to the outside of Biffle and almost even with Stewart for second. Jimmie Johnson ran eleventh.
The finishing order for the first 40 laps was Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne, Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Jarrett, Jeremy Mayfield, Bobby Labonte, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Michael Waltrip, Kyle Petty, Jamie McMurray and Scott Riggs, one lap down. Kurt Busch was off the track, six laps down to the leaders.
The restart inversion was set in a random selection, to ten cars, so Ryan Newman will head the field on the restart, followed by Mark Martin, as the top ten cars will restart in reversed order.
During the ten-minute halt, Dale Earnhardt Jr’s car received the most attention from the crew, the third-generation star complaining of a severe push.
On the restart, Mark Martin took the lead from Ryan Newman, then Kevin Harvick moved inside for a challenge, gaining third and dropping Newman to fourth, just ahead of Carl Edwards. On lap 45, Michael Waltrip caused the first yellow-flag period of this race segment by spinning off Turn Four, hitting the front straight wall and sliding across the grass almost to pit road. Waltrip got out of the car on his own, walked to the ambulance and took the mandatory ride to the track’s medical center for a checkup.
The green flag didn’t stay out long as a big crash started off of Turn Two, starting when Kasey Kahne, leading the pack, got loose and tapped Mark Martin, sending both of them into the outside wall. The pack behind them then turned into a spinning, sliding melee involving seven cars. Kahne and Martin received terminal damage, with Kyle Busch, Greg Biffle, Jamie McMurray and Jeremy Mayfield all out of the race after the smoke and dust cleared. The red flag soon came back out, bringing the field to a halt for cleanup teams to bring the track back to race condition.
“I just lost grip,” explained Kahne. “I thought everything was great and suddenly I was backwards.”
Twelve cars managed the restart, headed by Harvick and Edwards. Johnson and Newman were third and fourth with Jeff Gordon fifth.
The restart on lap 54 was somewhat less dramatic, as Carl Edwards eased back and Ryan Newman pulled to second behind Harvick as Edwards appeared to have a handling problem briefly, dropping to sixth in only a lap before he stabilized. Matt Kenseth swept around Newman on the inside, with Jimmie Johnson chasing down Newman. Harvick started taking advantage of the battles behind him to pull out to almost a three-second lead over Johnson.
The running order at the second segment break had Harvick leading Johnson by about two and a half seconds, then Carl Edwards another two and a half seconds back, with Tony Stewart fourth, Matt Kenseth fifth, Jeff Gordon sixth, then Ryan Newman, Bobby Labonte, Dale Jarrett, Kyle Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr and Scott Riggs, still a lap in arrears.
Fuel-only stops during the break didn’t change the standings approaching the final twenty laps of the race, Harvick and Johnson went under the restart side by side and stayed about that way for the entire first lap, allowing Kenseth to try to stick a nose inside them in Turn Two.
Carl Edwards lightly hit the wall off Four but then Kenseth and Stewart got tangled in Turn Two, somewhat similar to the incident between Kahne and Martin. Fortunately, the incident didn’t tangle any other competitors and both drivers rolled back to the garage. Only ten cars were left on the track after this incident, with Scott Riggs still a lap down.
At the restart, Johnson led Harvick, Gordon, Edwards and Newman, with Bobby Labonte challenging briefly for fifth. With ten laps left, Johnson held a small tick over a second lead on Harvick, with Gordon closing slightly, Edwards chasing Gordon and Newman about 3/4 sec ahead of Labonte.
Scott Riggs gave fans a thrill when he almost spun off of Turn Four but continued with the fastes lap speeds late in the race. Newman shortly afterward had a similar moment, as did Kyle Petty. The final few laps of the race settled down to a fairly predictable procession, Kyle Petty moving around Earnhardt for eighth and Johnson going on to beat Harvick by 1.729 sec. after leading 33 laps.
Kyle Petty finished eighth, joining sixth-place finisher Bobby Labonte to put both Petty Enterprises cars in the top ten. “I’ve been doing this for a long time and this is the most humbled I’ve ever been,” said the third-generation racer. “I wasn’t voted in because my name is Kyle Petty - I was voted in because people believe in what we’re doing with the Victory Junction Gang Camp. All the fans really went out on a limb and voted for me and I’m incredibly humbled.
“The race fans are the ones that put me in this race. I’ve never been more humbled in my entire career,” Petty continued. “There are still a whole lot of things we want to do with the camp and all the money we raised this week is going to go a long way in helping us do those things. If Adam were here with us tonight, I’d have been in the motorhome watching him race instead of me.” Petty lost his son Adam in a crash during practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in May, 2000.
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i want to commend kyle petty. he has really became a real diplomat for nascar unlike a lot of the rest who are selling out to toyota which includes the waltrips and dale jarrett. what ever happpend to the good old boys.