Reutimann wins at Chicagoland
David Reutimann kept Carl Edwards at bay in the closing laps of Saturday night's race at Chicagoland Speedway, claiming his second NASCAR Sprint Cup series career win
The Michael Waltrip Racing driver emerged as the winning force in the last quarter of the race after spending most of the race running in the top five. Right before the leaders pitted for the last time he was all over Jeff Gordon's rear bumper, trying to find a way past to grab the lead.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver was able to keep him behind for a number of laps until he eventually conceded the lead 54 laps from the end. Following his last pitstop Reutimann stretched the gap to Gordon to more than three seconds, but then the Roush Fenway Ford of Edwards started to close on him, cutting his lead in half in a matter of laps.
However as the laps faded Edwards' charge started to vanish in the traffic, letting the #00 Toyota cruise its way to victory.
Last year Reutimann won for the first time at NASCAR's top-level in a rain-shortened event at Charlotte, partly due to a strategy gamble paying off. This time there was little luck involved in his win, as besides some strong cars encountering problems, there was nobody able to match his pace consistently in the last two stints of the race.
"No rain tonight, we earned this one and nobody gave it to us. That feels really good," said an excited Reutimann. "I've heard so much stuff for winning a rain-shortened event that everybody said we didn't earn it. Tonight I don't know what they could say about this one."
Edwards was happy to claim his best result in more than a year by taking second place, showing signs of recovery for his outfit, which has yet to win a Cup event this season. His team-mate Greg Biffle was enjoying a good run but retired late in the race with a broken engine, while the other two Roush cars were 12th and 13th.
"We are definitely on the horizon," said Edwards. "We haven't quite gone over, but I know we can run that well because we have done it and we did it tonight. We just have to figure out how to do it every week. I hope this is something we can go back on Monday and talk about, why our car was so much different this week than it has been."
Jimmie Johnson was probably the only one who could have prevented Reutimann from taking victory but the reigning champion hit trouble after leading for the first 92 laps. He first misjudged his speed entering the pits for his second stop under green, getting sideways while braking and being forced to abort his run into pitlane and complete another lap.
Then as he was making his way back up front he spun exiting Turn 2 after a restart and despite staying on the lead lap he struggled from then on. A later scrape with the wall and issues with the right-front tyre forced him to pit under green and drop two laps down to the leader.
Gordon, who was celebrating his 600th consecutive start in the Sprint Cup series, looked like taking his first win of the year until Reutimann's late charge.
Instead he ended up third, ahead of Richard Childress's Clint Bowyer and Earnhardt Ganassi's Jamie McMurray, who led for 72 laps until losing his momentum and seeing Gordon get past him with about 100 laps remaining.
"At times it looked like our car was the one to beat," said Gordon. "But I think David was really, really strong and we got the lead that one time and when he ran us down I knew we were in a little bit of trouble. We made some adjustments on that last pitstop and unfortunately they didn't go the right way for us."
Points leader Kevin Harvick struggled with balance and then with a fuel pump issue that sent him to the garage for lengthy repairs. He was classified 34th in the end, 16 laps down, but maintained his lead in the points, trailed by Gordon and Johnson.
Pos Driver Car Laps 1. David Reutimann Toyota 267 2. Carl Edwards Ford 267 3. Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 267 4. Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 267 5. Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 267 6. Kasey Kahne Ford 267 7. Jeff Burton Chevrolet 267 8. Denny Hamlin Toyota 267 9. Tony Stewart Chevrolet 267 10. Paul Menard Ford 267 11. Martin Truex Jr Toyota 267 12. David Ragan Ford 267 13. Matt Kenseth Ford 267 14. A.J. Allmendinger Ford 267 15. Mark Martin Chevrolet 267 16. Juan Montoya Chevrolet 267 17. Kyle Busch Toyota 267 18. Brad Keselowski Dodge 267 19. Joey Logano Toyota 267 20. Regan Smith Chevrolet 267 21. Elliott Sadler Ford 267 22. Ryan Newman Chevrolet 267 23. Dale Earnhardt Jr Chevrolet 267 24. Sam Hornish Jr Dodge 267 25. Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 267 26. Kurt Busch Dodge 265 27. Reed Sorenson Toyota 265 28. Marcos Ambrose Toyota 265 29. Bobby Labonte Chevrolet 265 30. Scott Speed Toyota 264 31. Travis Kvapil Ford 261 32. David Gilliland Ford 261 33. Kevin Conway Ford 256 34. Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 251 35. Greg Biffle Ford 225 36. David Stremme Ford 184 37. Bill Elliott Ford 176 38. Robby Gordon Toyota 174 39. Landon Cassill Chevrolet 73 40. Casey Mears Chevrolet 49 41. Mike Bliss Toyota 40 42. Max Papis Toyota 40 43. Joe Nemechek Toyota 20
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments