2003 Martinsville NASCAR Cup Series Full Race October 19, 2003

car going to the end of the field the winston victory lap honoree here former winston cup champion darryl waltrip three-time champion 84 wins tied for third all-time dw in martinsville very synonymous he had 11 of those 84 wins here on this tight half mile track he tried to figure out where was daryl the most dominant was he here at martinsville or bristol yeah and the car he said there you go he's got him a checkered flag that's a victory lap there you go the number 11 of course the number that he had so much success with the junior johnsons car uh somewhat reminiscent of the 85 budweiser machine that he uh won his third and final championship in so dw today's honoree in the winston victory lap closing out on the start let's go to pit road marty allen quick check of the martinsville numbers for ryan newman his average start 5.5 is average finish 28th that's not so good that's why they tested here two weeks ago worked through several problems they had here in april the result matt borland says we have the best car we've ever had here matt marty two of nascar's all-time legendary teams petty enterprises and the wood brothers have combined to win 21 times here at martinsville the last time the 43 team won here they started 21st at johnny andretti today jeff green and ricky rudd start 10th and 12th both are very confident about their chances green trying for his first career win right trying for his first with the wood brothers today burns mike skinner makes the last of his 11 starts for the army car here today you'll see mike next year in the craftsman truck series driving for toyota now the driver stepping into the 01 for the foreseeable future is making his last start in the 25 car today joe nemechek hands over this steering wheel to brian vickers bush series championship leader who becomes its full-time driver next week at atlanta bill the race season is 36 races long five races remain any championship contender will tell you the most important race is the next race but that's truly very true for mackenza the company tiny martinsville is a big mountain on the way to the championship for this team a top 10 finish might be as good as a win alan table thanks we'll keep an eye on matt kenseth today as he comes from 14th starting spot he finished 22nd in the april race here two more pace laps before they cut him loose want you to remember who leads at lap 50 later on today you could win a trip to new york city and serve as a special correspondent at this december's winston cup award ceremony it's the nascar big apple sweepstakes remember left 50 and who's the leader you'll need to know that to enter to win interesting what they did to this racetrack last year they ground the bottom group kind of like taking a cheese grater going across a block of cheese so they took some grip away from the bottom group did not touch the top group so actually what we have now is two grooves that were about the same you can see the light colored section down the corner of the concrete that has been ground down some of the surface taken away on the outside it wasn't so it used to be on the when you're on the outside a huge disadvantage not so much anymore yeah that's amazing i walked across the racetrack this morning when you're in a race car in this place you think that you square this place as flat as a board and there this track is banked in the corners it's not banked very much but you would never know it when you're driving that race car it actually feels like it banks the opposite direction see a beautiful day here in south central virginia i like that temperature of the concrete 78 degrees the asphalt at 90 degrees but the cars will be getting their grip on the concrete at 78 degrees and what that means is this is a very difficult race track to get a hold of oh yes very much so track surface stays cool it's slippery there's not the grip in that concrete there isn't some of the paved tracks we go on so this this key is is get through the center of this corner the corners here and actually there's a lot of brakes used at this racetrack but if your car handles well and the car rolls through the center you don't need as much brake well jeff gordon told us you just don't know what's going to happen in a race here it'll be fun watching to find out [Music] jeff gordon gonna lead lap one ward burton second side by side for third dale jr inside of kenny wallace and junior talks about his car is not that good on the first few laps of a tire change he expects it to be much better on a long run kevin harvick creeping in behind them so that's third fourth and fifth jimmy spencer in the sixth position in the light blue seven car from harvick's view and just that little slip on earnhardt's part was just enough for kenny wallace to get in front and make the pass clean now because of the changes benny talked about to the bottom lane of this racetrack you see these guys running up off that bottom that makes that inside lane so tempting oh yeah when you see that big gap that hole you go oh man it's all mine but it's also when you're coming off the corner on the low side and you've got a car on the outside of you it's very difficult because you need all that race track to keep your momentum so it's hard to stay underneath that car going down the straightaway when you pull up off the corner side by side you see that yellow curve on the bottom of the racetrack when you get down like kevin hartman that 29 car pushed down there sometimes the crowd on the outside you hit that curve and it throws you up in that car on the outside we'll see that before today yeah yeah and usually starts about a four-car race actually how about kevin harvickville a strong start for him but inspection was the tough part for this team this morning they had too much camber in their car the first time they went through so they took the car out of line fixed it and went back and the nascar officials said it was worse so they held them until they were the last car through inspection got them to the grid late but so far okay and that was too much camber in the rear right bill you betcha we saw a lot of that here on friday wally as well guys having a tough time getting through inspection and let's just explain what rear camber is and why they want to have more on the right rear tire they would lean it in because they go down the corner and all that force applied to that right rear tire will try to roll off the rim so the more you have it leaned in the more contact pass you have the complete tire when you get down in the corner so basically you're you're getting more grip because of that and that's what they're trying to gain and there is a limit to how much rear camera you're allowed to run by nascar and so that's uh that was the issue there with the harvard car hey this is the head of a race right here earnhardt jr kenny wallace kevin harvick third fourth and fifth i think junior's got him now so dale jr to third kevin harvick the fourth kenny wallace now under fire from the seven car of jimmy spencer farther back championship leader matt kenseth and 14th right where he started but he's being challenged for that spot by tony stewart dave and that high line that matt is running is what he's been running from the start in fact i asked him this morning you're starting next to teammate kurt bush are you gonna ask him if you can have the inside line he said no i don't want it said my car works well on the high side i'm gonna stay up there all day he has not moved down for even one corner of this race so far matt as tony stewart works the inside trying to make the pass on matt kansas he told me this morning that in the final practice session on saturday he did a lot of experimenting moving around on the racetrack trying to see which line would work the best on about lap three he clicked on the radio and told his crew she breaks it bedelli i really like it up higher that's what i'm gonna try to work unless i'm gonna try to pass somebody which he just did to the 17. the thing is you got to watch what we're watching right here is got sterling there matt wants to go but sterling's running the high side too so steve and tony stewart the advantage on the bottom [Music] i think they helped this racetrack tremendously with their competition when they ground that bottom lane took some of that grip away down there certainly certainly made for more side by side racing which is what all these 90 000 plus fans are here to see tony stewart working on sterling marlin gonna be and just was beside him coming off the turn two but he was on the low side when he got on the gas he spun the tires and that was just enough for the 40 car to clear him tony the 2000 winner of this subway 500. now ken schrader up underneath matt kenseth to challenge him for a spot schrader in the 49 remember i talked about earlier he got a top 10 finish here back in the april race [Music] he didn't qualify all that well starting 18th 43-97 the battle for about the 10th position between kurt bush in 97 jeff green in 43 ricky rudd in 21. kirkbush started 36th and won this race last october these cars are slowing down to about 60 miles per hour in the middle of the corner top speed around 115 miles per hour to 60. so you can see just how much break it takes to slow down a 3 400 pound car this is rusty wallace trying to take a spot from ryan newman using the outside practically leaning on each other and in practice yesterday rusty used that outside outside lane many many left trying to get his car see how his car was going to work on that outside dale 93 races since rusty's been to victory lane the team has very high hopes here the car pretty good since they got here when rusty drove wally's car here yesterday he was so happy with how that car handled he asked is he under the hood to see what was in there he said i'm going back to my guys and see if we can help the two a little bit so wally you may get uh thank you for victory i didn't have a whole lot to do with the setup yeah well we know that he could call steve lloyd and thank him right yeah so he could be the man rusty wallace is seventh and ryan newman back to eighth behind them boy these guys are been at it here for they had to start stewart and marlon in the 40 for 13th and 14th looking back at them from mike skinner and they're just you know they're dead even through the corners but tony cannot get up off the corner because he needs that outside of the racetrack to help him give him the grip you may get a break here now boxes in sterling behind the o1 car of mike skinner [Music] [Applause] running that lower lane though doesn't do anything as far as uh hurting the tires more than running the outside or i mean we talked about grinding the track in a cheese grater so people might get the impression that the track is so rough it'd be like a darlington or something yeah i think maybe you may use a tad more break than the guy on the outside because on the outside has a little bit of room to slide where the car down the bottom obviously doesn't have much room to slide up the racetrack because you've got somebody on the outside of you while all that's going on in the pack jeff gordon continues to lead 21 of 500 laps complete in the subway 500 at martinsville [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] leaders the fourth car back caught the back of the field [Music] [Applause] [Music] clear by three [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] heavy lap traffic he spot the end of the field about two laps ago the 37 car is jerry cope he lapped him about uh i don't know two laps going guess what cope is somehow back in front of him [Music] marty what's going on with the 24. he's a little bit tight right now bp and this is the same article different newspaper same thing that happened here in april the first 75 laps when green jeff gordon led on and put many cars a lap down and jeff told me this morning he thought the complexion of this race would be a little bit different because of the new lap down role people would fight harder to stay on the lead lap yeah that the the lucky dog thing is going to be on a lot of people's minds because they're expecting that to keep we usually have a lot of cautions here they're expecting that to keep a lot of guys on the lead lap when we get down toward the finish of this thing he finally gets by casey mears here's a battle for second junior eight car underneath ward burton at 22. this battle is about a second and a half behind the leader jeff gordon kevin harvick right there he's going to have to try to get a little bit closer to junior if he can keep ward up on that high lane having company is always fun we have company he was out on the racetrack just a little bit ago he was on the racetrack yesterday three-time nascar winston cup champion daryl waltrip how you doing man i'm doing great you know riding around there at number 11 for those first couple laps they were just teasing me you know man whatever you want to do 500 you want to do 500 more laps huh well you know i did 200 yesterday ben and i felt okay and uh i got up this morning feeling kind of racy i thought i could hang in there for a little while anyway ran the nascar craftsman truck series race here yesterday finished seventh nice job had a seventh here in the spring came back out of seventh again this time so i like racing here but it is different and it is harder because of the what they've done to the racetrack and the track is a little slicker than i found it to be in the spring uh that bottom lane is so tempting to get down there but boy you've got to be some kind of hooked up to use it in martinsville memories 11 wins here boy what a what a great place for you over the years i guess 87 would have to be my favorite yeah came out here on sunday morning jessica lee my daughter just been born walked over to my car there was a note in the seat that said win this one for me daddy and a rose ran all day long i had no chance of winning not a prayer got a late caution got four tires dale and terry blabandi were racing each other for the win i'm sitting in third i give levante a little bump going into three and shoots him into dale i come off turn four i win the race i led all of a hundred yards that whole day yeah but i won one for escalade yeah it was it was outstanding that at the end of that race i remember well well it was cause everybody was saying what happened yeah they took well that's not what earnhardt was saying he was saying some things not fit for publication there right jeff gordon's still the leader earnhardt jr now the second harvick the third and ward burton has fallen back to a fourth place well d.w it is nice of the folks in nascar to honor winston for their involvement for the last 33 years benny you know they just think about you know just like i do what this sport was like when we were started in the 70s uh you know not very many people 25 or 30 000 it was a big crowd uh the places always looked like they needed to repair no matter where you went super speedway or short track winston really they stepped up our program big time took it mainstream and they've done an incredible job with this support and uh it's a shame to see them go but as you well know main chains got to move on uh jeff gordon right now wants to move on but he's trying to get by the other corner oh robbie loose in that 31 car robbie gordon and that's the way that second turn is i mean and he's loose in and off webber what's going on with robbie gordon it might be more than the car robbie found himself with food poisoning last night actually had a violent was violently sick had to take two liters of fluid this morning is feeling weak but a little bit better he did see someone in the infield care center before getting into the car this afternoon but not feeling well at all after food poisoning second place here kevin harvick that car's loose enough i think i'd be really sick i'd be looking to get in that car as bad as i'd like to be out there wally i'm not getting in that bag it's not even tempting right oh no tell you what harvick's on the move here early now that he's clearer junior he'd be interested to see if he can make up some of the ground on jeff gordon and harvick the 29 car is able to use that bottom groove probably as well as any car i've seen yesterday and today [Music] it only makes sense if everybody's going to be running the lane up off the bottom if you can get your car to hook the bottom you got to have some place to pass and if you can get those left side tires right on that curve right up against it you got a little grip there there's a little bit about a foot of underground uh concrete right there and you can get some grip but you got to be right on that curve and you get in that grip with the left sides left side yeah so we've been doing the time off i think we've been putting together a little racing operation i'm going to go truck racing next year we're working real hard on that and uh looking forward to that we're trying to hire driver we've got us to shop we took got michael cranoff as his old shop over there in concord bobby kennedy's working hard to get the parts and pieces put together and uh i'm just a big big believer in the truck series i think it's uh it's fun racing reminds me of saturday night racing like we used to a long time ago and uh i want to be a part of it but you are going to run the truck some next year aren't you just three times stevie has let me run here twice and uh and up at irp okay oh y'all laugh like y'all don't i guess y'all don't ever have to ask your wife for permission to i'm not trying to get into a race car no i'm not going i'm not going down that road watch this the two gordons [Music] we talked about guys trying extra hard to stay on the lead left yeah i think robin robbie was there [Music] already [Music] you've had food poisoning before right that's it that's a real sick hurts yeah not good tony rayne's a 74 car back in 35th jeff gordon trying to get by him put them a lap down that's when these things go green like this so long at the start of a race if your car is not working and the green flag dropped they're going to come and get you and put your lap down quick so a lot of these guys are hoping for a yellow so they can get in adjust on these cars a little bit before they get left kevin harvick's coming quick behind him i see jeff gordon give tony the slide to get up there a little bit you said i need that out i need that grip on the outside how about the wallace brothers kenny in the 23 rusty in the two that's sixth and seventh place see that 97 car creeping into the picture also all right we just finished lap 50. need to know jeff gordon to enter this year's big apple sweepstakes you could be a special correspondent at this year's winston cup awards ceremony log on to or nascar.com and check out the nascar big apple sweepstakes for rules and your chance to register every week and you've got to know jeff gordon today as the leader of laptop 50. um we got a phone call yeah david hill yeah he said you better save your voice he's going to need you in a little while thanks for letting me come up and spend a few minutes with you guys this first time i've had a chance to really hang out with you guys and uh y'all do a great job and i i love listening every sunday and keep up the good work and thanks for letting me creep up here i still got my uniform on i was like wally i thought about that gordon deal there you know robbie until he saw how bad the car is i think i'm going to step on back here and slip into my chair in a hurry daryl thanks great to see you yeah jimmy spencer cautions out oh man spencer was fourth at the time who's in the smoke and who got bent up and rusty is yeah rusty's blocked he just got passed by about eight guys because he couldn't go anywhere he's got a right front fender torn up yeah oh man thanks dale good to see you thanks again see you man good luck man do you love you thanks ben yes sir yes sir thanks something must be wrong with uh jimmy's car he's got the window net down he's throwing his gloves i wonder if he blew it up when he was you know or something maybe with a friend or floored the gas to try and keep it from uh keep it spinning my guess is something that's broken in there yeah it's got to be so caution is out for the first time at lap 54 jimmy spencer running fourth at the time you try and get under toddler ryan there looks like he was and did not want to make contact yes backed up i guess rusty got him in the smoke maybe yeah i guess he did get out of the gas again that's where it's broken there kurt bush's car stop i mean you have to literally stop because you can't see anything obviously i mean folks that's exactly what you saw is exactly what kurt bush saw nothing but smoke you know the nice part about that though with the no more racing back to the caution you can stop yeah try and go charging through that cloud of smoke to keep your position at the line because that would have been ugly and especially those cars trying to get a lap back yeah from jeff gordon and by the way johnny benson is the lucky dog here he'll be the guy that gets his lap back good for jv [Music] so jimmy spencer rusty wallace torn up here we'll see uh the leaders come to pitt road now at lap number the end of lap 55. jeff gordon kevin harvick dale jr ward burton kenny wallace the top five coming in to make it better on pit road and safer he needs to put about 15 more cars a lap down but so far we're gonna have about 32 cars on this very tight pit road matt and tony stewart's team waiting for him to hit his pistol he's going to stop a little short so he'll have an easier exit around jason left with the car a little free in the center and three and four and a little free on exit they're gonna make an air pressure adjustment as jeff goods patterson also makes a wedge adjustment bill kevin harvick wants more forward fights so it's a slight track bar adjustment four tires and fuel he's on his way marty jeff gordon going for the season sweep at martinsville bill a little bit loose off the corner he radioed five laps to go down a half now both rear tires for more forward fights and he wins the race off by a bunch dave pretty pit stop for matt kent said the car was loose in tight in the middle loose off they lowered the air pressure on the left sides lowered the track bar a nice thing was that the car in front of him was a lap down did not hit therefore he had a nice smooth exit so jeff gordon leads on and off pit road he's out in front just past 55. [Music] so [Music] wanna watch that okay uh yeah plus the plus five to the right front [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah we did he's a lucky dog [Music] [Music] [Music] all right pull that bell's tight we want to go when you get back over here [Music] nascar racing the subway 500 under its first caution after jimmy spencer spun in turn four and rusty wallace piled in and you see the damage the right front fender there you see the two car before damage said damage and there's spencer and rusty does just know what to do yeah and there's nowhere to go he loses seven spots at least seven spots here i think because he can't go anywhere but he's got i don't know how much that defender damage is really gonna hurt him what do you think here i mean now dale jarrett penalty for see the wrench in the right right there it's too quick for me guys can't take the equipment out of your pit box that jerked it out but he had to start we'll have to start at the rear of the field and also jeff burton will have to go to the rear of the field there's a limit to the number of pit boxes you can drive through getting in or out of your pits he drove through too many wow look at that start gorgeous man he cleared that car's a lot down which is really important jeff gordon leads dale earnhardt jr second kevin harvick third sterling marlin right side tires only on his pit stop up to fourth followed by ward burton in fifth then kenny wallace kurt bush tony stewart ricky rudd and ryan newman jimmy spencer behind the wall dave all right al this may go in the stranger than fiction category jimmy what broke on your car uh yeah never gonna believe it i went down in the corner and i turned on it to make the corner and it wouldn't turn you notice i just locked the brakes down to try to not hit the 54 car and uh really let it feel bad for rusty that the steering box broke turning back to the left it wouldn't turn weird i've had no damn lock once again apparently no one else has on the track either alan yeah remember sterling marlin on that right side only tire change didn't work too good uh he and bobby labonte and todd modine and a few others all got sandwiched in i think bobby got the worst of it and i think i think maybe jeff green might have gotten the brown because he was going out back in three and four here we see yes couldn't go contact between him the 22 card ward burton and here they just stack up almost exactly like spencer and there we see reigns and kurt busch and todd godin all aimed for the same spot at the same time and the traffic jam yeah bobby lavonny gets punched by derek cope's car watch sterling here he just can't can't get going here that may be the tire deal and that's what you're talking about and the 43 car is going to come in here in the very back spinning yeah like he didn't get much damage because he spun out the way and that's that accordion thing we're talking about exactly now watch the whole close in front of kurt bush here when he heads to the bottom [Music] i think he just got nicked in the right side this is todd morris [Music] now that's a whole closing right there under caution for the second time in the subway 500. that enough like i could have run harder deeper into the corner than i thought i could just let me know if i start to use you can't see your rotors from up here but i can see the nose how much is diving and stuff i'll keep an eye on that too just tell kevin i mean i know he's got a good car now but uh it's been a good day just sitting up here all day long not getting no trouble spotter's right here on sailing he passed it off i've been coming in one more time we're gonna try to get it out a little bit more they're getting one to go now you're not gonna be able to stay out i think it'll be all right stay out [Applause] [Music] you're clear i'm floating around here todd coming greet next time bye [Music] and the restart in the subway 500. robbie gordon was the lucky dog he's back on the lead lap now in 34th position [Applause] and it's jeff gordon leading the field back up to speed but this time junior the eight car gets a terrific restart stays right on the back bumper the 24 cars don't you know harvick in that 29 cars in town wanted to took me 30 laps to get by yeah and i lose that spot in the pits [Music] one of those boys in the pits are so important especially he worked so hard to get around a guy don't want to give it back up and come down pit lane showing the black flag to tony raines he was supposed to restart at the tail end of the longest line i believe for pitting too soon came in with the levi cars because he got damaged in that wreck and uh didn't go to the back of the line restart so now he's going to come in for a green flag stop and go better off to the back of the line kyle petty 45 first car one lap down hoping to stay there and get a lucky dog pass how about rusty wallace bill well made two stops under the previous caution and just stopped again under this caution they had a problem alan they wanted to change four tires but because the field is so strung out under caution and the pace car speed is what it is they didn't have time to come in and get left they were only able to take rights and cut away the right front so on that caution they came in and got left made a chassis adjustment and sent them back out very disappointed thought they really had a shot at breaking that 93 race winless streak today and they probably the the speed on pit road is 30 miles per hour and a battle per second spot is harvick goes by junior 30 miles per hour rusty got busted twice at charlotte last week for speeding yeah so this week trust me he will not be speeding fairly close to the best and that's why that they could not take that chance other pit stops under that last yellow sterling marlin jeff green derek colt bobby labonte along with rusty wallace guys that basically got nicked up in the in the jam there on turn four i see rusty wallace's car while that concerned about one thing his brakes on that right front it looks like that the air dam might have been damaged that scoops there and goes in and cools that right front break on the tube watching ward burton a little stalking on dale jr for that third position [Music] remember the ward was involved with sterling marlin in the beginning that last caution he said this on his team radio right afterwards i can't just stop the middle of the corner uh certainly didn't mean to do it 10-4 buddy message already delivered yeah that was pretty obvious really for the replay that uh strowman just couldn't get the car going and uh with everybody else on four fresh tires they were going for the record sterling doesn't feel that way yeah oh yeah imagine that of course and you say message delivered they do that through the spotters up on the roof how about a stack or two nascar winston cup track fact as we look at kenny wallace running fifth place in the stacker two car this racetrack began its existence as a dirt track then it was paved only two drivers one on both dirt and pavement petty and jim paschall uh-oh we got brian newton going around and turned two whoop-dee-loo looks like he got uh he got a little help from somebody he's trying to get going and rejoin because with the no racing back to the yellow rule if you spin is that's that left rear flap must be like his left arm is flat with the no racing back to the yellow rule if you spin where you get back going again is where you fall into line in his case there was so much traffic coming by i don't know if it's flat or not i think it's just these guys run such low pressures here i think 30 car gets into them right here yeah steve park got to the back of them and the lucky dog on this one kyle petty we'll get back on the lead lap you're watching nascar on nbc one new car out excellent it's not not real bad just like it's good in to the middle now just past the middle i can't i'm not turning there and throwing up like i need to i'm still kind of waiting on the car past the center so must just be that spring a little bit spring rate in there propping that hurt mental process so you know wart's car was doing the exact same things you were he was sliding as far as bobble at the same point so for the restart you guys are about the same right there [Music] [Applause] [Music] sure swap the two right sides on the set on the wall so there's the tigers in the back [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] stacker two the world's strongest fat burner [Music] one more lap before we go back under green in the subway 500 yesterday's nascar bush serious race in memphis great finish coming to two to go johnny solder with a little wiggle and bobby hambler jr helping him out of his way yeah and bobby hamilton jr went on to score his third win of the nascar bush series season championship really took a twist too there's hamilton jr and winning check our top five finishers from yeah share the victory with the crowd and the spotter our nascar bush series update david green had some engine trouble so look at the championship four races to go 44 points first to fifth that is outstanding atlanta next saturday for the nash cargo series will have it on tnt all right now garmick [Music] jeff really hasn't had anybody knocking on that rear bumper all day so we'll see if harvard can apply the pressure just might change with that 29 car back there wally not been a very good racetrack for kevin harvick thus far in his nascar winston cup career best finish of 16th and he's running second now and dog and leader jeff gordon i'd say he's dogging him [Music] looks like that last two laps anyway harvick can run lower jumps up the racetrack a little bit but jeff is getting that bite off the corner just enough to stay ahead pull ahead jimmy spencer coming back on track after repairs to the steering box on his car 36 laps down to the race leader in 43rd position here's here's that board now look how flat this these corners look it looks like it's flattest board yeah but there is banking there and it feels like its widest board from these race cars when you go in here you just slide over like kevin harvick's doing that banking it doesn't seem like it helps you in the corner what is the bank of 90 degrees here 12 12 degrees race for third place ward burton working winner here won this race 2001. check that best finish here third in 2001 i got to read my own writing yeah well you're sloppy i am bill can you help me out here i can't help you out reading your own writing but i'll help you out on the 22. scott wimmer came here and tested that car with frank stoddard they were very pleased with not only the car but how wimmer drove now as we talked about on the discover card countdown to green this is ward's last ride for bill davis racing the team this morning confident that they could finish their marriage so to speak with a win and you heard ward talk about that earlier today so far so good it looks like the test that scott wimmer did in the 22 car has helped ward burt because he is very competitive in that 22 car well it's helped the whole team because kenny wallace is running well also in the uh team card of that 22. he's up in fifth now what about ryan newman bill you got an update on him yeah they stopped three times as he bangs with the zero car change the right side tires they continue to bang back and forth then they had to come back in and change the left they brought him in for a third time trying to put a tape a big tape bandage on the left rear of that car and you can see it just flopping around there in the wind zero looks underneath so far nothing much for brian but his car was very very tight before he got spun a few laps ago brian newman eight-time winner so far this season but in three previous winston cup tries at martinsville his finishes have been 41st 15th and 38th and we talk about track position all the time and how just how gruesome it is there's the 40 car sterling marlin he was running about third or fourth spun had to go the rear of the field 12 car got above had to go through the rear of the field now those guys are back battling for 30th and 31st and it's hard to go anywhere it's almost impossible to go any place and that's just what you know you like you see ryan here he's searching well you know sterling's working here i have to try down here i'm gonna get take a look underneath get in there hard try to outbreak him get beside him now if he can drive off the corner but see that's the problem right there you spin your tires when you're low and that outside car will just get about a half a car length on you getting into the next corner do that five or six up then you get impatient then you start leaning on the guy down on the bottom will start driving the guy up on the high side up the racetrack a little bit and now they're trying to drive ryan in behind the 37 car jerry cope was a little bit slower than this group of cars and yeah they picked him up and ryan's gonna have to back off get in line and start all over again sterling marlin in 30th ryan newman 31st so they also have to worry about the leader coming up behind them quickly to put them a lap down this is a race for fifth sixth and seventh kenny wallace 23 tony stewart 20 on board kurt bush and kurt busch being able to drive through that small hole and accept whatever damage that he had has helped him there he is still with track position in seventh spot matt how's tony doing well he is making progress as he tells crew chief brexit benelli about the race car knocking on the door the top five trying to work on kenny wallace the car remember earlier was two free in the center and two three on exit they have helped the exit they have hurt the center but he feels like it's going to come back to him marty kenny wallace has been having an outstanding day matt very quiet on the radio they uh say the car is a little bit loose right now getting very happy with it though very quiet on the radio very confident same car he finished 12th with here in april and that 12th place finished the second best finish of the season for that team it's really been a struggle and they're hoping for a couple of good runs before they bring the curtain down on 2003 for kenny wallace right along with kirk bush see kenny wallace who's in the real high line about the highest line you can use for any group any grip here there's another car that 97 of curt bush that needs a good run the last month or so it's been a struggle for he and jimmy finnegan that roush car failed to finish three of the last four races vp ugly i'd say that that is a struggle in capital letters so that's uh kurt there slogging around in seventh place trying to take sixth from tony stewart how about rusty wallace rusty's back in 18th place bill yeah qualified and started seventh and fell back after that incident on the track spent a lot of time on pit road you hear about how aerodynamics have to be perfect and the car has to be perfect you can't win ugly well listen to this gonna have to do some creative things to get back to the front here so we have to stay out of time or two or we have to take two tires or something just to get some track position i don't think that the two front opinion tour office hurts the speed at all it's still his handling good turning good and uh i was worried about that i believe the roads would be okay and you'll be just fine your laptops are just as good now when you get a little open track as you were before and the last communication to rusty wallace just take care of that car we might be okay bill have you had any conversations about the brakes and the fact that these brake ducts were destroyed in that crash bill wilburn saw that when the car came on pit road he's rusty's crew chief he said just make sure we can get some air to have trouble on the track dale jarrett going around in turn two oh and he gets left by the leader before he gets the car going again does that make him the lucky dog if he is the first car not on the lead lap when the caution comes out that's a good question we'll let them make the call on that yeah i don't think we've had that happen no they're calling the 38 as being the first car one lap down i guess maybe if you caused the yellow well they're the 38s in front of 88 he was able to get by let's see how intact there yeah derek copeland 37. like i said these folks come here because they're guaranteed to see action and we're going to have some action on pit road as the leader heads in first seven eight looks like everybody on the lead lap so far gonna come in for a stop here at lap 107. all right dave you're first matt kent has said we're definitely better on this run once the tire pressures came up therefore four tires and no changes to the chassis on the 17 car matt tony stewart hits his pit box enters get rid of the set position still needs a little more help though on the forward bike but the center has come around bill air pressure different for tony kevin harvick can't get off the turns the way he wants they're going to make a front tire air pressure adjustment for tires and fuel martin jeff gordon's lead every lap and he wins the race off pit road by a two tire stop bill so the car's really good i need a little bit more drive off but i'm afraid to make big changes so let's not do anything to it now that some guys did not hit under the caution that some guys took two tires we'll reset it all for you when we come back to the subway 500. hey maybe that they're uh wrench yeah what do you think i got that insurance or something what it puts money in your wallet in case you're like flat on your back never heard of it well you can get it at work get what aflac ask about it at one [Music] [Music] when i think you're the last car in the lead lap there's anything else you want to do other than a 38 getting his lap back that's it for we're good right now [Music] [Music] okay one to go this time [Music] coming at you coming at you we don't need to take a chance just be ready for a right front tire pull the fender off don't change the tire unless we have to guys he said it was robin you might want to just i don't know whatever be ready to change it pull it out if it's not rubbing it's going to the front not the right rear just the ro that's the front just right front go go [Music] you're watching remaining in the season another outstanding championship now we're gonna have a championship battle here in just a second for the lead of this race cars did not stop cars changed two tires yeah man all right bonnie on the point here we go with the list cars that did not pit terry the body bill elliot jeff burton sterling marlin jason lethberg those are the first five in the running order guys that got two tires include ken schrader kurt busch bobby labonte brian newman rusty wallace and greg biffle scattered throughout the top uh 17 or 18. jeff gordon just changed too jeff gordon was uh first off pit road uh you did not catch that report for pit road we'll follow up there vp thank you change to 24. okay lucky here casey mears at 41 car trying to get up and get in front of the leader he don't want to be a lucky dog he wants to be faster than the leader he did it boy casey now meanwhile bill elliot the nine car he's going to battle for the lead so casey meers now last on the lead lap in 36th place [Music] dale jarrett is the first car a lot down hoping for a lucky dog more on today's race and nascar at nbcsports.com if you love vp like those folks did you can email them a question on nascar check out uh analysis and opinions on the sport from benny and myself nbcsports.com one of the things you've been talking about should they change the system used to determine the nascar winston cup champion how about this kurt busch trying to get alongside jeff gordon trying to take the spot away there's 20 74 there and he's going to get under the 74 i think oh no but 74 puts jeff gordon up out of the way kurt busch goes by junior goes by kevin hart tucked in there now oh junior right right all over the 97. and that's being run over yes what's that you said about action look at the right side of that car on the 97 car kurt busch left side's clean but wait do we get a shot of the right side oh yeah there we go oh look at that opening there right by the exhaust pipe i'm surprised it didn't hurt junior's car i'm sure it did let's take a look see what happened he hit the curb no he just kind of slid up the racetrack in the curt junior's field down there [Music] trying to get another 74 about the same time that junior tried to get undercurrent where'd the right side damage come from well that must have been from the earlier deal over their term yeah when the car stalled out installed and he tried to drive through there and actually did drive through there junior's got a little damage on the right front but nothing too severe bill what are they saying about the 97 car kurt hasn't said a thing only now there's trouble kyle petty caution's out kyle running in 30th place on the lead lap he's going to stay on the lead lap gets it going again and casey mears a 41 car stays in front of the leader terry labonte and the lucky dog will be bill jarrett who said that lucky dog thing here at de martinsville was going to have a lot of cars on the lead lap what's this the fifth caution flag and that's not going to be good for all those cars trying to make pit road pit speed it stops this is from robbie gordon's car uh-oh i got a feeling yeah i knew what was coming to you wally yeah whenever you get on board the car behind the car the crash pretty much know what's coming just about a quarter way through the subway 500. you're watching nascar on nbc [Music] said it's uh fought away from the tire yeah i almost climbed up on him you know ain't no telling what that did to my toe [Music] now [Music] [Music] go go go hook him up hook him up you're all safe you're safe pull behind the tent there you go nice job guys i was gonna switch it up but we're okay nice job [Applause] mark [Music] right side you want your right side this time no let's told where we're at [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so apparently the 31 made contact not only with the 45 but also with the 43 so while they are out there under caution jeff green says leave our guys alone robbie we'll see if the message was delivered or not not very happy with robbie gordon out there yeah he's also telling me he's not very happy with it what's up with that it's basically the uh exactly what's up with that robbie and uh the 31 car has also been issued a message from nascar race control that they would like for him not to have any more contact with other cars through the rest of the day oh that's easy here at martinsville and could could perhaps be a visit to the penalty box later in the day how about a singular wireless race talk poll talking about the action in the 90 000 plus here type of track is your favorite you like the short tracks you like the speedways like charlotte kansas and so on or the daytona talladega super speedway races what do you think okay hey bristol martinsville b charlotte kansas chicago c daytona talladega this is what the third or fourth pit stop under this caution for sterling marlinville yeah they've been in here several times now the hood goes up overheating problem for the 40 the water lights on so they've been here to try and work on it sterling back on pit road with the hood up and the guys go to work but it's an overheating problem on the 40. it's like a leak of some kind they've got a hose trying to put water in it but exactly mccall said what is it he must have a hole maybe he's got a hole in a good ham holding a ready or something right here the hose or something because it's not really hot enough to be having overheating problems right there yeah well that's not good they'll be going behind the wall i would assume you would be correct sir thank you when they slam the hood down and do not put the hood bands in green flag terry labonte is the leader in the restart got his track position by not stopping under the prior caution leaders did second jeff burton third kurt bush fourth dale jr fifth the challenge for sixth behind him jeff gordon has jumped to the inside of kevin harvick jeff's got a slower car in front of him the o2 car so he may get boxed in right here that's herbie sadler in the o2 oh he's trying oh jeff wants to make him a hole he wants to make a hole but kenny oh he can he can't make a lot of people angry he's back yeah he decided a little bit too early to be doing that tony stewart trying to follow through that same lane yeah he's going to find the same trouble once he gets up there a little bit further dale jr inside of kurt bush should be for fourth place [Music] but the lane is blocked oh junior just drove in that corner drove on the inside what a terrific quarter he made there now he's going to squeeze back up in front of him [Music] so i'll try and get in front of jeff and see if i can find a lane there ahead is tony raynes in the 74 but now he's moved up into the outside lane so that bottom side is free now for a junior [Music] he looks like third place looks like he's getting decent bite off that bottom i can't believe how well he drives in the corner i know he's got to be using a lot of breaks but tony stewart almost slid up into kevin hart and stuart's been able to get by jeff gordon in that 24 car and so has harvey i hear about the revlon there [Music] kevin harvick in six years tony stewart seven jeff gordon trying to take that back from him here's junior going trying to get by bill elliott for second position elliot slipped coming off turn two the last time he could not get off the corner and let junior get up alongside and here he goes you see now the two lap cars have moved up to one higher lane tony reigns into 74 and steve park in the 30 are using the higher lane now so it's bill elliott that's blocked in now kurt busch is going to try to follow junior rusty wallace jamie mcmurray jimmy johnson did you stop he stopped did you yeah he stopped okay i stopped he ran out he ran out of cars yeah good sixth caution flag that the 48 got away it's pretty clean yeah i think he got up johnson uh this car looks pretty pretty decent i think i think jimmy just got bumped afterwards [Music] that accordion maybe okay we got the front end we got the back end here we go this is going down the back stretch mark martin's gonna be right behind rusty awesome six and all right what's happening it's not going to work out let's rusty guys a little bit loose getting in and then mark finished them off see already got pinched by hermes sadler and jimmy johnson jamie was in the wrong place at the wrong time taco lines view [Music] he's gonna get done with this day and say man i've worked hard today oh look at this kevin harvick jeff gordon looks like is that coming back to the caution or that's earlier before the caution okay [Music] okay little crease in the back bumper there on the 29 that'll make things interesting bill elliot the only leader to pitch [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] fit on the inside of it that's the straight side y'all see the other one yeah i know i've been seeing him he's just gone blown up crazy get him right front is [Music] the damn way the wheel is and everything looks weird [Music] oh [Music] okay one to go this time [Music] [Applause] [Music] lean in here for just a second sterling a tough top hundred laps for you out there yeah it has been we uh had a good call early you gained a bunch of guys who gave them leaders and uh put on two tires on that first stop and dave ward all kind of room and he run the back office turned this round and uh got against benson he checked up coming off first two and uh barely hit him and nothing don't work in the radiator not having a good day here at martinsville the 40s still in the garage piece of duct work into the radiator now this rinse it in a moment ago watch matt kenseth your championship leader right behind it managed to get through all the mayhem and we're back under green the bonnie has been out there for a long time on those tires he didn't stop that time they talked in the garage area over the weekend that just seemed like that the tires ran a good speed for a long time don't they day yeah tear the body has only fitted one time he put it on lap 55 no changes to the car it handled so good in traffic i asked jim long how's it handled out front he said even better kerry's never won here but he's finished second three times this would be a nice trophy terry continuing to be out in front guys that stopped under this caution i mentioned bill elliot came in matt kenseth also stopped mike skinner casey mears jimmy johnson rusty wallace and jamie mcmurray my guess is that matt kenseth in the 17 car tried to stop to avoid that accident and suddenly that he put some flat spots on those tires because you don't have to slide these tires very much to put a flat slot on them one car might have the left rear flat it's like both front both left side tires are flat john andretti creeping down on the pit road you can see the left rear is down and he's going to stop back there in the turn three end of that mid lane for the race lead dale jr is all over terry the body let's see how long it takes him to cut and go well how about right now yeah not too long junior was bragging about his car and he has every right to because that eighth car is terrific today junior stopped at lap 107. terry the body stopped at lap 55 so they got a lot of check positions difference between uh between their tires working for him and kurt bush now working on terry for second so the the age on the tire is starting to show up now this was jamie mcmurray's pit stop a minute ago watch when he tries to leave they've got the air hose tangled in the car oh well that gary is removing equipment from the pit box man and alan betty speculated about the flat spotting the tires he cut down a left front when he got mixed up in that accident you talked about matt kenseth there jamie mcmurray okay dave can tell us about that i got it square yeah that's okay um on the 17 car actually benny he didn't mention flat spotting the tires but what he did talk about was boy how many laps we've got in our tires we better make a pit stop he didn't realize he didn't have that many laps on the tires so after they did that robbie reiser calmed him down in the car he said that's all right i've got an idea we'll see what the idea is as time goes on oh an idea yeah that's gonna be scary i bet that has to do with staying out on another caution let's check out race for seventh and eighth ward burton 22 jeff gordon 24. jordan is falling back another position jeff gordon goes by and jeff getting a lot of heat right now from kenny wallace and kenny schrader it's just it's so difficult to pass here i mean it's just really really hard you gotta you really gotta baby the throttle because it's so easy to jump on the throttle here and if you do you're just gonna spin your tires now here's kevin harvick working on terry lomani for third place bill kevin harvick out there going around the five having a good run here but uh earlier some on track traffic he was involved with and this was the radio conversation between kevin and cruz the 24 is just checking me out so [Music] i had to do something about it that's in four on then he tried to jack the 20 up but he did the same thing you did wind up with no hood if he's not careful so that's kevin harvick getting a little bit of what he's been given the last couple of weeks don't you think kevin harvick is uh getting himself some track position right now as he continues to try and close in on the top two as he runs in third there's junior the leader kurt bush second now harvick third terry the body fourth tony stewart is fifth this is the race for seventh jeff gordon ward burton jeff gordon surrounded by burton brothers jeff burton 99 car in front of him ward right beside of it [Music] [Music] 22. you wonder which which lane in front of you is going to go up is tony raines going to go or is jeff burton going to go [Music] [Applause] right now it's tony raines those guys move the high line which opens the low line up with jeff but getting that traction down there jeff trying to move up the racetrack put those right sides in that smooth part of the concrete to get some grip and also you're trying to run the guy up the racetrack a little bit so he'll hesitate just that little bit so you can turn the wheel cut and clear him when you get off the corner we heard from kevin hartman a minute ago marty's been monitoring jeff gordon for us what do you got marty this guy's got his hands full out there the car tight for jeff gordon right now and the odd thing is it acts differently in one and two than it does in three and four oh it's so weird i mean my car will not work on the outside down here three and four it loves the bottom down there but it sucks on the outside what's it do out there with it it just pushes really bad i don't know if there's anything to show speaking of pushing yeah he just got pushed by the one car pretty good now remember john andretti had the flat tire so he's got fresher tires he was on pit road under the green unfortunately for him he's three laps down in 39th place and really you're better off in the position that jess has just let him go yeah but that does tell us that new tires can make a car a little bit faster can make you run faster so andretti they're working uh to try and get close to the front of the pack and see if he can get one of those a couple laps he's lost out it's two laps down that he is in 39th place look at this behind him ward burton ken schrader kenny wallace ricky rudd brian newman all racing for a spot [Music] the last time i off turn to kurt busch 97 took a look under the eight card could not quite make that pass [Music] gets hard on the brakes [Music] hear how he picks that gas up easy easy dale jr trying to hold off kurt bush marty has the same thing going on jeff gordon has on going on he's very good off turn four he said he can't get off turn two as well as he would like what we're seeing is a lot of drivers not driving not driving the bottom but in the middle trying to get some left sides down on the stuff that's grooved in right sides up on the smooth pavement that's where it seems like the grip is that's where the eight card's working tries to track him down uh john andretti flat left rear tire again wow what if he's got something like a brake duct or something rubbing that tire i would guess that'll be exactly what the deal is dave yeah that's what they're looking at they said look in the left side this time make sure there's nothing rubbing they think something is i bet there is yeah he runs so many hoses and and brake ducts on these cars because this place is so hard on brakes that sometimes you get them a little bit too close to the tire and the tire will rub on that and it'll just slice it and he was running the inside lane so any contact with cars would have been on the right side so yeah so john andretti with troubles in the subway 500. dale earnhardt jr no troubles right now except maybe kurt bush kind of pushing him for the race lead [Music] so [Music] [Applause] water temp 200 junior water cm200 all right thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you're clear [Music] we've got a car stopping at the top of three and four caution's out caution's out back and down up to the top there he's worked his way to the bottom [Music] 23 carp ahead the right front flat make sure nothing comes off of it stay up away from and we see that uh there's some contact between players that might be what happened to the right front tire on the 23 car 23 car gets a little bit loose goes up oh both running in the top ten bill davis has got to be happy no i'm only kidding folks yeah kenny wallace got a little bit loose there when he corrected it ward burton was already there now jamie mcmurray is being waved past the pace car right now under the last caution we saw that problem he had on his his pit but the penalty that was assessed to him was the wrong one it was too stiff for the infraction he should have just started at the end of the line instead of being held for a time penalty the time penalty caused him to go a lap down so because nascar says we made a mistake on that they're putting him back on the lead lap to give back what they took from him by error well that's that's good that's good so they wanted to do that before they opened pit road so mcmurray could come in and pit with the lead lap cars like he should be able to right and that's debris from kenny wallace's car that he's been shedding down the back straightaway and now kenny on pit road the pit road is still not open kenny hit that wall pretty hard i'm sure he's going to have a lot of bent suspension pieces on the right front of that car yep and warden didn't do his any good bet we see tara the body pit here i would think tires might be great but he's probably getting low on fuel looks like they're going to keep pit road closed another lap because they want to get that debris picked up off the back straightaway that's where the cars exit the pit lane they don't want people running over that just after they make a pit stop so let's take a break from martinsville it's the subway 500. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] around the truck they said all right well they ain't coming in we're coming he's on pit lane stop on the side shorter shorter because it's 24 poppy coming in right start looking left start looking left right here good job [Music] go go go go outside clear right there [Music] the caution flag after teammates kenny wallace and ward burton tangled it's the seventh yellow of this race leaders have all just come on to pit road for stops most of the leaders a couple of guys have stayed out rusty wallace jimmy johnson dale jarrett jeff green did not pit and kevin harvick is the first off the pit lane of the cars that did come down pit road had a lot of things happening on pit road under these stops watch this this is tony stewart we talked about just how tight it is oh man stewart is trying to leave his pit as mike skinner and the army car cars coming in how much damage did do the 20 car i don't think it did anything really but look at it here i think it slid right underneath the back bumper of the 01 car mike skinner didn't really see much there but now if he got into that fuel cell there looked bad no it doesn't look bad at all my front corner would have been where he got him it looks pretty clean huh just see the black marks there right by the word carlo there the monte carlo race off pit road of those that stopped kevin harvick and kurt bush outside of him look at that that was close junior jeff gordon should creep into the picture here in a second tony stewart terry labonte jeff burton i now know jeff jeff gordon made a pissed off i saw him wow there he is yikes rubble that would be a lot of track position lost bill kurt bush up two fifth and the routine pit stop form just four tires and fuel able to get in and out without trouble so it's a good run for him they tested here that seems to be paying off routine pit stop for the 97 matt you saw the video the contact between mike skinner and tony stewart you can also tell by the video just a slight buffing of that front bumper tony's car needed a little more help on forward bikes so greg's the bedelli made a track bar and air pressure adjustment marty in first out six for dale earnhardt jr they had sitting there i need a little bit more forward by half pound out of both rear tires pretty small adjustment dave tara the body gave up fourth place marty to pitt they changed four tires took a little air out of the rears to give him more grip up off the corner now championship leader matt kenseth came in and changed four tires he said that that set of tires made his car very very tight so they didn't make any chassis adjustments in the same air pressures in a new set of tires bill the 29 car of kevin harvick came down pit road also four tires and fuel no changes i wondered why i hadn't heard much on the radio for this team today and they just told me they agreed before the race because of how hectic it is here not to talk on the radio unless it was an emergency marty jeff gordon has fallen all the way back to 15th bill what happened when shane parsons took off the right front tire a lug flew in the air landed on the studs so when he put the new tire on it wedged itself in between the new tires and the studs had to pull the tire off take the stud that log out put a new tire on took him a long time on pit road bill and the leader of the races rusty wallace how about that bashed up race car at all of course they stayed out under this caution period last stop on lap 139 and lap 140 took two tires on 139 and two more on 140. they tell me the race car is excellent despite how it looks and they just need a track position we'll see what happens lap 185 of 500 complete under caution in the subway 500 in martinsville virginia [Music] [Music] hey sure why don't you see if you can see somebody down there you can find two more sets of tires maybe for the 40 if he's out and a 10. [Music] fun to go this time in the 10's still sitting out on pit road all right might be him talking to gibson see if we can trade something out with [Music] it [Music] [Music] [Music] green flag green flag wallace has just led the field around first time back at full speed jimmy johnson's second dale jarrett third did not pit under this caution flag then kevin harvick fourth and um kurt bush fifth kyle was in the race yesterday kirk today yes yes dale earnhardt jr tony stewart terry the body jeff burton can schrader make up your top 10 jeff gordon 14th place here comes harvard he's he's going to get to the front pretty quick i've got an idea here he just turned left going in turn three and drove on the inside of dj in the 88 car and takes that spot away but kurt busch trying to follow him through in that 97 [Music] here a little bit deeper dale jarrett did it lasted 123 clear so that's about 60 lap pressure tires that harvick and some of these other guys have he realizes he's going to lose some positions 10 or 15 would be reasonable but it would gain him some position if he can just hang on until the next caution flag and everybody pit he'll fit with him [Applause] call that dale jared in the 88 mr alongside jimmy johnson for second place he was there but timmy johnson had a little bit better grip off the corner now he's going to take a look again not so much the advantage this time for jimmy matt what are they saying about jimmy johnson's car it's been a struggle all day but it's been a horrible weekend for jimmy johnson and they're running back to back top tens here they have just not been able to dial that race car in chad canals kept him out for track position in fact at one point this weekend wally they had jimmy go out and follow jeff gordon just to see if he can pick up anything to help that race car [Music] jimmy finished sixth in this race last year was his best martinsville finish ninth in the spring race this year so a couple of top tens in a row for the 48 team here asked you earlier in our singular wireless race talk poll what kind of racing do you like most the short tracks the mile and a half two mile intermediate tracks for the daytona talladega super speedways pretty even split yeah i kind of felt like a and c would be swamped that uh folks would like the daytona talladega races but i'm glad to see that uh a short track got the most i think we needed a d in there for all of the above i think it's one of the great things about winston cup racing is the variety of tracks and the variety of challenges that these drivers have to conquer to win a championship terry the bonnie it's a seventh place he's working on dale character take that spot [Music] hard to believe all the success that terry labonte has had in nascar winston cup racing a 22-time winner he's never won here in martinsville he's finished second three times but he's never been able to just get that one more spot dale jr looking for fourth place and got it on jimmy johnson harvick has caught the two car rusty wallace and he's going to take a look down downstairs with those fresh tires there's not much rust you can do except say go big boy i'm going to try to follow you get me some tires on our next pit stop and hopefully i'll be close enough to you i can do the same thing to you so new leader kevin harter [Music] as he told him earlier we're going to do some things that we don't want to do to try to get this track position back hiker was involved in that crash with jimmy spencer kurt bush on rusty per second tell you now kurt's hanging right with kevin she is they've gotten away from junior a little bit but 97's hanging right with him how about a check of the championship standings as they were on matt kenseth wow it's way back in 22nd place he pitted one more time than some of these other guys have uh pitted on that last caution as well dave how about matt kenton all right four guys working on tires back here for matt kenson didn't like that last set todd millard leads this crew as a tire specialist what they're doing is resizing rechecking they brought tires uh from somewhere that they weren't here before making sure they have the best sets for matt doing everything they can not to try to have another set that he doesn't like so matt kenseth mired back in traffic now in 22nd place here is the race for fifth and we haven't talked too much about tony stewart the winner last week at charlotte but in the 20 carpet he is fast it looks like right now that harvick bush stewart jr pretty evilly matched listen to this on tony stewart's month the last four races third third fourth first up from 11th to seventh in the championship standings in that time something about this team late season it's like when the leaves change color it all go the leaves turn orange there you go well i don't know whatever it is but boy they really come on strong and finish each season so well when tony stewart won the race here three years ago in uh the fall of 2000 he led 179 of the 500 laps for his win that day did you ever have in your racing careers just a part of the season that was yours i wish off season yeah off season yeah [Music] there are too many easy life it has been unusual of the success that they've had in the second half the last three or four years of that 20 car look at this bush closes in on the back of harvey kirch's not yet led today started 13th looks like kurt gets in and just through the center a little bit better but kevin harvick is getting off the corners a little bit better lets the car slide up a little bit junior trying to take over that third spot from rusty wallace and he will a couple of laps go check the scoring monitor and junior in the eighth car running a little bit faster than harvard bush is trying and they're gonna come up on a couple of slower cars pretty quickly here check this out man he can drive that car in can he yeah that car getting into the corner like dynamite so kurt bush out in front as we close it on halfway in the subway [Music] so [Applause] [Music] there you go that's a lot better [Applause] [Music] there you go about one [Music] [Applause] [Music] in front of you man stay with it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] players [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] 217 laps of the subway 500 are complete and on this short track with 43 cars that started all trying to find room to race we're going to attempt to get you through the field before something big happens so let's start at the front of the field with the race leader kurt busch came here tested regime to be fitting so they had a good test got four tires and fueled and that's all other last stop that helped a lot because it only got two tires on the previous stop at lap 108 it's right behind him the 29 car of kevin hartman having a solid run did not test here has not said hardly anything on the radio but i was reminded there are nearly 300 laps to go in this race just taking our time marty bill the third place man in the championship dale earnhardt jr is in third right now trying to catch kevin harvick a little bit tight to start this run that's good news they get loose for the longer they run and they're very good on these long runs matt tony stewart has climbed up the fourth looking for a second martinsville win he hasn't said anything on the radio about those adjustments on that last stop to help the forward fight bill rusty wallace was leading on the restart has fallen back to the fifth spot but still the car is good he's on older tires stopped on left 1 40. ugly maybe for the two how about the five dave it's better bill no comment from terry since he came in and took that air pressure out of the rear tires better grip better car for terry matt remember jimmy johnson stayed out in that last caution for track position still holding steady in the top ten currently seventh battling a tight race car all day a tight race car all weekend marty jeff burton started 21st looking underneath jimmy johnson for the eighth position gets that position not so quickly there cars coming around for jeff had a rough start to the race he says calm down we have a chance to win it if we stay in control jeff uh bill uh thank you marty right there in the 12 car ryan newman started eight fell all the way back when they had that trouble had to come in get tires get back out now looking inside the 99 trying to pick up positions balls back in line we check in on the 49. kenny schrader holding steady also in the top 10. on the last stop they took on four tires because the previous stop kenny took on two he didn't like that set of tires no changes though on the last stop in fact at one point marty he came on the radio and said to beth that margarethal the owner if you stand up the whole race like you are you are going to be very tired at the end and he rounds out the top 10 guys marty matt after the 19 second pit stop jeff gordon restarted 16th he's now trying to take tenth away from ken schrader says he has no forward fight right now a little bit loose off the corner phil and right behind them the 31 of robby gordon remember got food poisoning last night i had to take two liters of water an iv this morning did stop at the infield care center i just asked kevin his crew chief how are things i got a smile and a thumbs up so i guess they're okay right now marty bill three-time martinsville winner ricky rudd in the 13th position right now they asked him what was wrong with the car and he said it won't turn left i think that's a problem here at martinsville considering there's no right hand turns dave probably or for uh bobby labonte is won't turn the middle of the corner and track position biggest thing for them right now that magnus wayne very frustrated that he can't get the car through the field mark martin two-time winner in the sixth car currently runs in 15 start at 23rd they really haven't adjusted a lot on this race car all day he's just been mired back in traffic okay 17 cara of matt kenseth he restarted in 25th has moved his way up to 22nd not a lot of commentary other than please tell me where the leader is got to make sure i stay ahead of him and so that is uh through a chunk of the lead lap cars although there are 33 of them and 97 the leader is having some problems yeah everything that that kirk bush worked for to try to put some distance between he and kevin harvick is gone because he ran up on slower cars and behind them jeff burton 99 and jimmy johnson 48 racing for seventh ryan newman in the mix there oh no not three wide kurt please no no that's not gonna work out okay go ahead now maybe we'll work kenny wallace two laps down in 35th place after his troubles we saw earlier todd rodin in the 54 was trying to stay on the end of the lead lap 33rd place oh that was a good move that was a great move by kurt bush just turned junior goes into second position the a-car harvickson goes skinny right rear this is fun right rear tower yellow the caution flag is out dave something up with matt kenseth what a huge break for these guys they think they have a left rear tire going flat very tight in the middle for matt a little bit loose off the corner but he thinks he's got that left rear down they may have had to stop under green which would have been a big blow wow so a great break there he had made some contact with someone with the left rear tire on the 17th car because you know these tires of goodyear's have a good year in yellow and you can see as a car goes around when they're all black and that yellow is gone that means that we've made some contact with someone and uh sometimes that does have a punctured tire when that happens right here come the leaders dave tear the body no chassis adjustments on this car just four tires and fuel they'll get him on his way matt tony stewart army and a track bar adjustment three quarters of a round as they come around to the left side [Music] ellen hart jr actually did not come down pit road meant to come down pit road he was upset on the radio jeff gordon however in front of him car a little bit loose they go our tight rather flopwood round on the track bar four tires for gordon and jeff gordon is too close to the wall he's having trouble getting the left side up the jag man had to pump the thing two or three times and i just cost him all kinds of time dave costing time for matt kenseth was casey mears pinning right in front of him matt pitted at the front of his pit stall casey near the back then to push matt back before they let him go forward as i said these pits are tricky very very tight all kinds of things happening here all at once kenny wallace spinning out of the racetrack as matt kenzer thinks he might have a left rear tire going flat we got guys who did not hit under the caution including kurt busch dale earnhardt jr and kevin harvick bill these guys down here are furious the leaders about when the pits were open and when the flag was waving nobody they claimed saw that the pits were open when the leaders actually went by the first time claiming the flag came out too late and the guys in the back of the field saw it before they did they are living down here oh man marlon hart jr bp he is absolutely livid on the radio as well he said the flag did not come out until after he passed pit road and passed the flag he was very upset talking to his team at first then just venting his frustration on the radio about the leaders did not see the flag he said the radio the team told him everybody else around you is upset as well he said i don't blame him i am too obviously there he is and green flag when he weighs it means it it's okay to pit but the question is when did he wave it if now if they wave it right now those two cars can't see it right [Music] and when the red flag with the yellow cross on it the other flag that's there is out that means pit road is closed and you're not supposed to make a pit stop [Music] now we think we figured out what happened to matt kenseth and why that left rear might have been a problem for him this is jason leffler in the zero [Music] there's definitely contact there and that all that cheap metal on the right front like a knife dave and so here's what you do you tell your guys i had contact with jason leffler i may have flatted the left rear get up on the wall get ready and when the tire eventually came off it was full of air but you get ready just in case okay now let's go back and show you the reason for the caution flag see kenny wallace going into turn three and he just [Music] loops it getting into the corner [Music] i'll show you later we're still digging for what caused the caution but we'll catch up to it because when we say yeah we got it let's try a different machine yeah look at 23 there he just he's got a flat going into the corner right there he's lucky he's backing in the fence that time yeah and sitting right in the middle of the racetrack inside and outside phil well down here in curt bush's pit that's crew chief jenning fenig talking to the nascar official that has his pit this could be adults only television tell us what happened what kurt did or didn't see i don't know nascar they'll do what they want you know in the meetings in these meetings we have sunday with nascar they say they're going to go one lap one lap until they get everything straightened out it was automatic that is part of the argument down here that it has been since they went to the lucky dog rule that the crits do not open right away there was some concern about whether the pits opened too soon down here the message that occurred on the radio was these guys make up the rules as we go along during the race marty tony urry senior what did junior say on the radio what did you say to the official well you know uh we had a new pit road was over here to fit it but okay since they come up with all these crazy rules they got and dover they said the first time you go by pit road pit road is going to be closed so they can sort out the alignment so they know who gets their lap back now the sudden they've changed the rule and don't tell nobody we drive by the pit road don't know the things open they got too many rules they can't keep up with it junior said he had five car links before the green flag came out on pit road not enough time to make a decision like that kurt bush dale jr and kevin harvick do not pit under the caution as well as dave delaney he stays out takes over the fourth position then the first car off the mid lane tony stewart who rides in fifth now you got three guys up there that have lost a lot of patience in this race yes three guys are real angry and all of a sudden tony i think that the advantage has swung heavily over tony stewart yes because he made that pit stop he has pressure tires than these cars [Music] and benny that's why greg zippadeli lets spotter mark robertson have the authority of when pit road is open he is the one that tells tony okay come in pit road is open he saw the flag told tony to come in when running fourth it was a great move they got first off hit road good move by mark is right so now stuart with fresher tires by about 50 laps and these guys he's trying to chase down in front of it yeah i think tony will be there pretty quickly i'll tell you what it looks to me like driver eight is a little hot right now just hot about life little aggressive behind the wheel a little aggressive yeah taking a look here he comes for the race lead [Music] earlier for 33 laps i'll tell you what that kurt bush drives are in there he's coming marty i think insist is a good word vp he is he is livid on the radio still upset all the way coming to the green about what happened on the racetrack he said we're gonna get killed here because the old tires are going to go away but i'm going to do my best to keep those guys behind me probably what they need to have happen is for this thing to run green for about 50 laps and then get another caution because then if you get about 50 laps on the tires then the other guys are going to want to pit if i was nascar i probably would throw a caution flag i'd find a piece of debris someplace to try to even this thing up he just let the cat out of the bag oh pp okay anyway unless with all this junk there's got to be some place but in saying that oh here we go junior almost got in the back of the 97 do what i just say in saying that you're you're taking the stance that they would feel that they made a mistake in the call but if they don't feel they made a mistake in the call there it is you're out there bill kevin harvick didn't stop there also same situation for him exactly right alan so he'd probably vote with benny on that but they were kevin came across the radio and said it wasn't out when we went by and he goes they i might have missed it but i guarantee you the guys in front of me wouldn't have missed it it was not there yeah it's unusual for three guys to make a mistake like that one you could maybe so dale jr goes to the lead and tony stewart with those 50 lap pressure tires oh yeah closed right in on all of them he's gone by dave blaney to take fourth around the left card john andretti in the one the mix in this right now is andretti the one car who seems to be faster than these three leaders and he may slow tony stewart's progress down some because he's going to take the inside lender whatever lane he feels like he can pass these cars tony now could try to follow and follow him yeah i think he probably will and then once the one car clears then tony will get by the one car remember john andretti with two flat left rear tires under green earlier it's putting four laps down back in 39th place but he has a great race car don't make john andretti as we see this for the second position now you think these guys were hot before now they're really hot when these fresh tires are going oh yeah even hotter tony stewart underneath kurt bush i realize you folks listen to this to us talk about these fresh tires and say well they're only half 25 30 miles on the tires good gracious don't tires last 30 40 000 miles no they're lucky to last 75 80 miles on these race cars and 40 50 miles can make a huge difference in how they grip the racetrack and the speed around the track yeah a little bit better here at marsville where you're only talking about a couple of tenth of a second lap between everybody just that little bit better means a lot tony just can't finish the pass poking him out poking the nose out poking the nose out but he just can't get up in front of him right here yeah those tires on kurt's car are 41 laps older than the tires on tony's car 41 laps and here's jeff burton underneath curt and that's the point i was trying to make 20 miles difference on the tires but it makes all the difference in the world and how the cars grip around the corners so jeff burton bye and kurt pushed back another spot junior's going to be yelling when that 20 car goes by him he's got to catch him first second and a third advantage for junior on tony stewart you see the gap john andretti the lap car junior's teammate has closed up on him on pressure tires yeah well it's gonna it's gonna happen here comes texas terry started 31st running sixth working on kevin harvick and kurt bush for fifth and fourth how about terry there dave i just want to remind you what a great strategy move this was remember they started 31st way back in the pack when they stayed out and stayed out and stayed up they needed it to stay green long enough for everyone else to want to pit and then they got back on the same pitting strategy as the leaders it worked yeah and that's kind of what i'm talking about here with junior and and uh harvick and kurt is if the race runs green long enough that the guys who just got the fresher tires are going to want to pit then they can be back with fresh tires the same equal tires with these other guys and they'll lose some track position they'll lose from first second third maybe back to seventh eighth and ninth but at least they're in contact with the leaders john andretti trying to get one of four laps back now junior really if he's smart here she just let the one car go not be forced to race up there side by side because that's going to help tony stewart track him down marty what's tony what's uh dale jr saying now anything his team has told him a couple of times to let the one car go just what wally said but i think he's so mad in the race car wouldn't let anybody go by him right now i think that's the whole point he's just angry right now we're just past halfway in the subway 500 martinsville speedway in virginia nascar on nbc dale earnhardt jr is out in front of this race but his lead shrinking rapidly as tony stewart closes in on him from behind we've got 34 cars on the lean left we've had eight caution flags for 57 of the 258 laps that have been completed so far only one driver not on the racetrack sterling marlin with overheating problems after something went through his radiator earlier in this situation right now you basically eliminated the three of the fastest guys that have been here all day [Music] now let's go back and look at a replay of the pit road open close flag it's going to come into the left side of your screen kurt busch the leader now it should be waving now if kurt jr there's the official that green flag's up wait a minute back it up back it up is that it's not it's coming up yes right i'm not i'm not colorblind that is that flag is green i understand but these guys are already past where they can see it it should be waving it should be waiting somewhere when these cars are back in in this area [Music] now it starts waving i would like to see a shot from inside a race car if we can if that would be the way it is because you're right it we can see it here easy you know but it's a different perspective when you're on the racetrack bill i think we also need to determine what lap that was because the concern is nobody was looking for it in the front because they didn't think it would be out that lap they expected it to be out the next lap and that and that's a good point bill because if if you're a driver and you're coming down out of turn two your spotter probably going to say pits are not open yeah so you don't even look at that flag you start looking at your gauges and you start you know messing around with other stuff all right we're not going to believe this third third striking you're out john andretti's got another flat left rear tire there's definitely something rubbing on that and tony stewart has caught dale earnhardt jr to race him for the lead now we talked about what a huge disadvantage this was for junior and for kurt busch but how about kevin harvey who is second in nascar wisconsin standings who had a real shot a very good race car today he's now back in seventh and kenza is not having a good day he's only back in 29th another look at it uh back to when determining when the flag waved you see on the right of the screen you see the official there at the end of the pip road he's waving the red flag right now right now those are lap cars going by now see look at that yeah the green is out out plenty early yeah so i think there is time if the drivers had expected to be out yes so so that's where the question then becomes and see junior started to move the pit road there but couldn't make up his mind if he should or not yeah [Music] that's going to be a hard one to argue all it is [Music] and remember what we said junior said he only had about five or six car links once he saw the flag to react to get the pit road that's not enough time he also said to tony erie jr i didn't want to come if you weren't ready for me i wanted to ask you first didn't have enough time to do that either well the second part you're probably right he had enough time to get that car on pit lane but if you don't know whether to come or not you know you don't want to do the wrong thing as a driver you don't want to get yelled at if you come and go what are you doing we didn't tell you to come in doing a good job for keeping him on this long anger will help you do that yeah it will and we keep talking about tony stewart how about jeff burton at 99 car he's hanging him right in there with these guys [Music] let's see if he can get him this time [Music] bobby labody has fallen off the pace for a couple laps been showing a little bit of smoke dave his last reply on the radio was well it's going to blow up earlier he had switched the ignition boxes to try to fix the problem but now the crew is leaving and they think their day's done it's tough yeah that blue smoke is a bad sign and that's when the crew leaves and he just pushed behind the wall so from no attrition suddenly we've got a couple mechanical issues here as we work towards the two-thirds mark of this race stewart's gonna have well he's got company with jeff burke right now but he's gonna have some more company with uh jeff jordan jimmy johnson here he doesn't get by the eight car try to get away bobby the body being black flagged by not making minimum speed at this point so he'll be coming to pit road and probably back into the garage dale earnhardt jr holding off [Music] [Applause] so [Music] sorry about that okay god [Music] huh i'm pretty good a little free all the way in deep into the corner and a little forward bite up i'll be nice [Music] sure you do that right here take just leave it alone take a half out of that that track bar back down dj i'm just telling you what my car's doing you changed something all right real loose at the end but i was still faster than most of guys on tires like me so no tied it up a lot real time to start [Music] leader to hit his pit stall only 40 laps on his tires but they decided to pit to continue to work on that chassis needs more help with the forward fight a track bar adjustment for tony bill rusty wallace is on pit road this will be four tires and fuel no changes the big thing is getting the fuel in because the vent is banged up from contact on the track marty dale earnhardt jr loose off the longer he runs a pound in both left tires for more forward bite also a half round down on the track bar don't tighten it up too much four tires he may win the race off pit road dave that gets it's very frustrated with his car not turning through the middle of the corner so they pulled a spring rubber out of the left rear and hope they can live with the loose off big rush off the end of the pit lane but dale earnhardt jr is going to come out first stuart gordon burton [Music] johnson and rusty wallace now why are we under caution top of the screen dave blaney hard to tell if casey mears in 41 got in the back of him blaming the 77 or he just lost it going in the corner joe nemechek michael waltrip casey mears did not pit they take over the top three spots you're watching nascar on nbc that was 80 laps on your tires as green flag laps and you had 17 caution so that's right at 96 laps that's probably the post you've ever owned a set [Music] people [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] 222 laps to go you're currently in 11. a lot of guys some of them guys might have did two tires up front uh because they were just being remembered yeah they were just right in about 30 laps ago stay focused we'll get them kurt we'll get him we don't give up 74 coming up on the outside he's halfway down the back this must be there's nobody one lap down welcome to the lucky dog [Music] 32 of them right now from what i see [Music] [Music] so they want to go when you get there i want to go [Music] flag the pace car comes off pit road here all right picks him up now the flag is waving down on the left-hand side the green flag is waving [Music] it's going to start waving yes it may be waving now we see it is now the green flag is out but here's what kurt bush said and his spotter talked about it [Music] right there the road was flat open like this i can't believe they did they've never opened it that soon they opened the damn pit road here's your nose came across that line you never did that before oh it's just not bad at all they always wait one lap and jimmy's right they have always waited one lap they didn't that time nor they did this last caution flag as soon as the pace car picked him up and took him by the pit road open so [Music] back underway joe nemechek is the race leader michael waltrip is second casey near's third those three did not stop under this caution flag then you get dale earnhardt jr being challenged by jeff gordon for a spot there in traffic but gordon's going to get pinned in oh this is going to get ugly [Music] so gordon by dale earnhardt jr for third and jeff burgess on the inside of tony stewart has him pinned in behind casey mears casey mears is currently in the fifth position now tony pins the casey miers car behind hermes sadler's 0-2 car junior goes by michael walton with 15 his teammate taking over the third position stewart do the same thing [Music] right now well you got to pick your lane right and then it's something you know i mean and it changes every other lap trouble elliot sadler no caution yet now a caution comes out yeah he doesn't have the car running there and the no racing back to the yellow they'll all slow down which will certainly make that a safer situation for elliot sadler what happened to bring out caution number 10 a little contact between the zero car going down the back stretch elliott sadler and cut a tire maybe yeah he did left rear tire flat they don't turn real good when you get here at martinsville to the corner with the left rear flat tire so eminem's team with trouble here elliott south [Music] so [Music] raise that track bar throw him the wrench raise that track pop two turns go go go go i'll clear out clear move it out all clear [Music] [Music] [Applause] okay you never know man maybe if it's a piece of trash in the carburetor it'll uh clear through hopefully here you never know man [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] race under its 10th caution flag at lap 291 [Music] bobby labonte has taken his car behind the wall matt and bobby labonte's actually climbed from his car leaning against his hauler bobby any idea what happened to the engine we might have dropped the valve first thought he broke a valve spring we took the valve cover off and the valve spring one broke but uh slobbled up dropped a valve and they ended up broken pistons so um you know it wasn't meant to be our car was pretty good today we were got tangled up there one time had to stop to miss a wreck and lost a lot of track position back and forth back and forth the car was pretty good just guys did a good job just had another motor for you tough day for a former martinsville winner alan yeah i've had a few of those this year it has been a tough season while it cautioned the body but alan while the caution flag is out i think his car's going slow we need to cue the duck oh okay cause he'll be run over if we throw the green flag on these cars so duck here it is our aflac nascar winston cup trivia quiz who's the only driver to win four straight martinsville races richard petty no rusty wallace nope jeff gordon got to go back farther than that oh farther than that yep fred lorenzo 63 both of them in 64 in the spring race in 65. richard and kale and daryl and rusty all came close they all won three straight races here at martinsville but freddie's the only guy to win four straight fearless freddy back to the green joe nemechek leading jeff gordon second dale earnhardt jr third tony stewart fourth and jeff burton in fifth and here comes gordon on the inside of nemechek for the lead and do it that time this time only a couple of pit stops under that caution elliot sadler mike skinner dave laney jeff green pitted ricky craven kevin lepage as well there he goes [Music] so new leader the 24. jeff gordon has led the most laps today 107 earlier in the race dominated the opening part of the race then got shuffled back when they had a problem on a pit stop a lug when they were changing tires popped up in the air and came back down as they were swapping the wheel and got hung between the tire and the hub and they had to pull the wheel back off and get the lug clear and it cost them a lot of track position then they've been kind of digging out of that hole ever since dale jr going for second on joe nemechek while you drivers are fickle aren't you you know you can be mad one moment next moment you're loving the world junior very happy on the radio very proud of his crew for helping him stay up front they kept him calm even though he was very angry in the car a little bit earlier they had a great stop this last time has four fresh tires his quote on the radio we just diverted disaster i think it's second place that's why he's happy he wouldn't have been happy if they didn't get that yellow but because they got that caution and they caught that break obviously it'll change your mood a little bit quicker that way [Music] tony stewart getting in front of me check to pick up third joe shovels back to fourth and jeff burke working on him been talking about this when the pit road is open and what the confusion seems to be with some of the teams is whether or not the pit road is open on the first time the pace car comes by with the field in tow nascar president mike helton has stepped in here with us appreciate you coming over clear us up on this will you please well i think you got to back up to dover when we first introduced this element we said in dover that we may keep pit road closed long enough to sort things out well after we left over we went to talladega which is 2.6 miles and the pit roads down in turn four opening turn four kansas city is a mile and a half charlotte's a mile and a half the pit road opening is down at turn four we get to martinsville which is unique it's a half mile the entrance to pitt roads on the back stretch but we have opened pit road since dover on the first lap that the caution car has captured everything happens very quick in martinsville and and we have also kept it closed earlier one of the cautions earlier we closed it for about three laps because we had the carcass and everything on the back stretcher we wanted to get out of the way before we opened that pit road so we we opened it as quick as we can and in the case of the lap earlier we were able to open it as soon as the caution car collected them uh we feel like we've done the right thing we'll do it again we don't think we've done anything wrong i'm sorry that there's confusion between two or three of the food chiefs down there we think the flag came out an adequate amount of time and we think that that it's it's a lot of it has to do with the uniqueness of the playing field that we go to every weekend is so different and this is the first time we've had martinsville under these schools there you go well obviously when we replayed it you could see the flag and those guys had an opportunity to get the pit lane the flag was out early enough so just a matter of we've had earlier cautions today where the caution came out right after a caution period and we brought the green flag as soon as the pace car collected the green flag came back out maybe only a couple of cars pitted maybe a couple of leaders pitted maybe a bunch of them didn't so i think we're consistent uh if the circumstances allow us to do that it's just it's unfortunate that it and as it sorted itself out already it's fixed itself but we would not have modified anything because we felt like we were fair across the board with everybody else and the last the last deal is you've got to be looking for that flag i mean it's up to it's up to the guys on the roof and the drivers to be looking for the the pit opening flag yeah and we we we put him in a visible spot there are spotters uh we tell them in the drivers meeting where he's gonna be and david announces it over the radio uh the race director announces it over the radio if it was open when we do open it up but as you said in dover this is a work in progress and the drivers obviously did not quite understand that so now they do and and we're all back on the same page again and really no harm is done well yeah but i think it's more than that benny i think that that a lot of it has to do with the tightness of martinsville the entrance of pitt road uh begins in turn three instead of coming off the turn four everything happens very fast in martinsville i think from nascar's perspective we've been consistent in the progression of this rule that particular set of circumstances highlighted a situation that i don't think was nascar's fault i think today we have done it both ways depending on the circumstances allowing us to open it if there's not a clustered up somewhere to do that this and this is something that is discussed in the drivers meeting drivers and crew chiefs meeting two hours before the race that's correct appreciate it okay thank you mike mike help nascar president jeff gordon has opened up a big lead second and a half on dale earnhardt jr trying to re-establish the dominance he showed in the opening miles [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so subway 500 and jeff gordon is the man of the hour right now second up on dale earnhardt jr with tony stewart jeff burton and jimmy johnson rounding out the top five 32 cars on the lead lap ten caution flags so far today eight different leaders jeff gordon has led the most followed by dale jr and terry the body kurt bush joe nemechek other leaders rusty wallace kevin harvick and tony stewart boy jimmy johnson had 48 cards trying his best to get around 99. little debbie lap leaders give you the picture on who spent the most time out in front today is gordon jeff gordon easley now and getting those five bonus points for leading the most laps in an event still racking them up yep jeff burton having a solid run trying to hang on to fourth spot marty just a terrific run from the 21st starting position he came on the radio about 15 laps to go he said you know what it's a little hard to pass out here paul andrews came back said hey you're doing the best you've done all day long car looks terrific just keep doing what you're doing because it looks good he has to run that higher line that's what jimmy johnson's trying to take advantage of jeff burton five top five finishes in the last seven races at martinsville and there's a home game for him somewhat south boston virginia about an hour's drive up the road from here in martinsville jeff gordon the 24 car trying to put ricky craven 32 a lap down that's allowed junior to close right up on the back bumper so it is a little difficult to pass around this racetrack craving 32nd place now goes to the first car one laptop and you see that big pack of traffic ahead that uh driver 24 is going to catch up to in a hurry he's got a flat tire and that's right in the middle of that traffic in front of the leader man and he's going to get the pit road luckily that was ugly yeah and luckily that casing that did not carcass did not come off the wheel and stay on the racetrack but otherwise the caution flag would have had to have been waived to remove that a lot of left rear tires go down today yeah and it can all be well i don't know my guess is it's contacting cars or i wonder if brake heat wouldn't really see it there you wouldn't think in the rear it would be a problem because the fronts uh i don't know brakes are probably 100 200 degrees warmer in the front they are the rear just a lot of contact between cars i saw a lot of cars today with blowers on their rear brakes not just the fronts that's why i brought it up yep [Applause] [Music] jeff gordon on michael waltrip michael did not hit under that uh last caution restarted second and he's just gone a lap down so that didn't work out that's a plan that did not come together [Music] these guys are starting to come up on a lot of cars that can be putting a lap [Music] down derrick cope's car has been retired from the race mechanical problems for him uh we talked about bobby labonte's troubles earlier the only other car that's in the garage sterling marlon with a punctured radiator take a look at mike skinner's brakes brake cam [Music] [Applause] [Music] because the tires deflected so much but they don't look bad no they don't what's that tire the bottom of the tire just how much the flex tries to pull itself off that rim [Applause] is getting the grip isn't it yeah you'll be able to see the reflection right there the rotor is glowing like you said benny he's getting some pretty good grip you get good grip you don't use as much break here mike in the 0-1 car running in 28th place he's last on the lead lap that is jeff gordon coming up behind him to try and put a black down warden still holding off junior [Music] tony stewart is a couple of seconds behind this battle for the lead [Applause] dale earnhardt jr last three martinsville finishes fifth fourth fifth fourth third excuse me let 195 laps in the race here in april tangled with a lap car pretty late and spun around they box them in here oh he gets through those corners so good see if junior can keep him up he may box him in behind mike skinner see that right front fender kind of pushed under on a bigger track that would be a big issue not so much so here at martinsville marty how about that eight car pretty good and i think he works the bottom line a little bit better than jeff gordon that's what he's trying to do he actually came on the radio a moment ago said i'm afraid to use the brakes in fact i think i'm not using enough brake that's something you very rarely hear goes back to his rookie season at richmond where they lost the brakes during a race he said they come back here with half a pad sometimes left bp that's rare you hear a driver say i think i'm not using enough break here at martinsville and marty i talked to tony yuri scene this morning and i asked how junior taught himself to be so easy on the brakes he said after that time when he used all the brakes up here in richmond or someplace his dad said listen you're gonna have to learn to drive these cars without using smudge brakes follow me he took him on the racetrack made him fallen during practice after he said after that moment junior has never been hard on brakes again matt we're speculating a lot about the left rear tire on the zero car an interesting note mike ford told bill elliot that on the last of the tires that came off his car the left rear tire was actually 20 to 25 degrees hotter than any of the other tires huh then the right front tire wow that's amazing that race that uh that marty was talking about the race the junior came up here his first wednesday cup try here and he hit everything including a tow truck remember that got done at the end of the day and his dad shook his head and said he's got a lot of learning about martinsville he obviously has learned well now dale jr third in the nascar winston cup championship standings what about the guy he's chasing matt kenzen was just taken rather the 21st position away from jeremy mayfield dave well during this run matt sort of assessed his day here he said i'm using up my brakes i don't like that and the leader has been too close to me from behind all day he said but the balance is pretty much better than it was in the spring and they've gotten the car to rotate a little bit better through the turns mattis has been worried about his track position mostly all day as they run kenzith running in 21st kevin harvick running in ninth and dale jr running in second and jimmy johnson the 48 car has just gone by tony stewart wow taking over third spot what's going on with the 20 matt well he says the cars lost a little bit in the center of the corner but the forward bite issue that they have been fighting most of the afternoon is better the 48 car though they are starting to hit on it benny i've got you tony stewart running two and a half seconds behind jeff gordon still holding off dale earnhardt jr for the lead in the subway 500. [Music] you barely got a nose there you're clear [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] clear [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] back everybody [Music] [Applause] [Music] nascar winston cup series season jeff gordon started on hold today has led 159 of the 346 laps but got shuffled way back in traffic when he had a problem earlier though he has now reestablished himself in the top spot check out this race for a sixth and seventh spot jeff burton in the 99 being challenged by ryan newman in the 12 and burton in the 99 is struggling a little bit right now because kurt busch this 97 car drove by in the lap of four now he's the jeopardy of losing another spot to ryan newman [Music] how about jeff burton marty alan about how many people are at the race today about about 90 000 maybe yeah it's a little bit better than that yeah how many of them do you think would be happy if this 99 car went to victory lane the home state boy jeff burton won this race back in 1997 i remember that day a big home crowd following that afternoon and his record at this racetrack is fairly spectacular nine top tens in his last 10 races here including that win back in 1997 jeff burton would be a very popular victor right now if he could pull off this win but the car a little bit loose for jeff getting looser the longer he runs you haven't looked it forward lately look again been a lot of talk about jeff burton as far as what's up with his team for next year that uh sponsorship goes away at the end of this season oh here we go jimmy johnson 48 has caught junior you know this is kind of like he wasn't trolling last week we kept talking about tony stewart ryan newman and looked up and here jimmy johnson worked his way into the picture [Music] still got some work left to do before you get close enough to him to challenge him well he was close enough at one point but i think he lost it a little bit i think the traffic has uh been an issue by todd lodi 54 car [Music] todd todd is the second car one lap down in 25th place 77 of dave delaney just behind todd there he's in the 26th so those two guys are racing for a spot while the other two race for second and third around them [Music] jimmy johnson best finish here at martinsville sixth place run this race 2002 six top tens in the last eight weeks let about a third of the race at charlotte last saturday night came up with a third place finish the team kind of um i don't know if i want to use the word struggle but they had a lot of finishes in the teens in the spring in the early summer 12th 14th 12th 13th trouble turn four mark martin hermie sadler wow right in front of [Music] i gordon believe he got through that because he could not see a thing i'll promise you that hey sometimes you got to be lucky to win these things most of the time herbie sadler james madison university colors before his brother elliott started school and finished everyone a year all right now then all the leaders will be coming down pit road and pit road is open this time you see the green flag there and this could be the last stops of the race if this thing goes green to the finish yeah probably will be 145 laps to go and leader jeff gordon crosses the start finish line on the pit road maddie and i just spoke with chad kenaus right before that caution and he said i don't know we are just slowly working on it they started out with a very vanilla setup as they go to work on the left side of that 48 chevrolet phil kirk bush on pit road will take the tear off from the windshield it's four tires a quarter pound out of the right front and the right rear tires his car's good barney jeff gordon in the lead happy with the car said i could use a little more forward bite robbie loomis thought about a chassis adjustment decided not to do it they will make no changes on the stop for jeff gordon give him four tires and a winch matt kent said no delay leaving his pits this time they changed four tires made an air pressure adjustment in three of the four tires and lowered the track bar his car was loose off the corners looks like harvick had some trouble down there yeah it looked like uh left front maybe they had an issue get a follow up on that in a minute looks like the race off pit road was a close one all right let's check out the reason that we're under the caution trouble in turn four hermes sadler and mark martin got tangled up just in front of leader jeff gordon see jeff gordon trying to put a lap on greg biffle in a 16 car and gets alongside and around those two cars go and look at all that smoke and mark keeps it keeps his car going and that's important he beats the 16 to the line so he becomes a lucky dog there's two lucky dogs in that deal yeah jeff gordon being the other one and if mark wouldn't have gassed it if he would have just stopped there jeff gordon want to run into the sixth goal yes [Music] so under caution with 143 laps to go jeff gordon is the leader of the subway 500. [Music] six car coming around the top [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Music] okay one to go this you're watching the subway 500 from martinsville speedway on nascar in-car on in demand [Music] he's got dale earnhardt jr jimmy johnson tony stewart and ryan newman behind him in the top five have some horsepower of a different variety next saturday at one eastern on nbc the breeders cup world thoroughbred championships from santa anita park kentucky derby and preakness winner funny side returns the track and racing's richest day it's the breeders cup world thoroughbred championships next saturday one eastern on nbc sports just been getting great restarts bp it's important right now because these cars down below want to clear them junior laid back in the eighth car that time seemed like trying to get it run on jeff so he wouldn't get hung on the outside of 22. didn't work [Music] remember he and his teammate kenny wallace tangled earlier while both were running in the top ten [Music] 138 laps to go just after we've gone back racing have you seen the leaders pit for the last time today i think it stays green absolutely for sure what about if we get a caution 425 i think with 75 laps to go they might stop with less than 50 likes 50 or less laps to go i don't think they'll stop and give up track position because somebody's going to stay out there right 130 839 laps on the set of tires the speed differential between fresh tires at that point that's going to make it a tough call on these crew chiefs see jimmy johnson hung up on that 22 car and he's lost you know at least two or three seconds now on the leader because he can't clear that slower traffic two seconds doesn't sound like a lot but it's a lot here [Music] this is when you really want to run into that guy top racing i don't know that's what you're thinking believe me because these guys are getting away it goes back to what you said at the top of the broadcast wally about traffic all day you're in traffic and it gets frustrating it really does you know jimmy johnson finally clears the 22 but now he's got a lot of ground to make up tony stewart ryan newman all those guys are going to have to deal with the 22 and that's one way of dealing with it a little contact there nice save by ward that's easy way to deal with it in the background yeah just move it so stewart and ryan newman clear the lap traffic now two lap cars are side by side john andretti and the one in ward burton and the 22 are both not on the lead lap and there it is about four or five laps down to the leader and the 16 of biffles not on the lead lap and the 43 of jeff green so the next lead lap car is 99 jeff bergen and he's hung up behind all those cars and these guys are racing though the guys are locked down and racing for position they're racing hard they can't they can't just give up because they've got a leader there they're racing for the lucky dog yeah and then stay up there trying to be the first car left down bird gets alongside piffle continue towards the front jeff green and who is that mike skinner just rubbed together some tire smoke flying from between them and look now skinner's got a fender rope that front tire is rubbing the fender robbie gordon what a job food poisoning or not remember he was uh going lap down earlier when we saw him hanging it out trying to stay in front of jeff gordon at the time and now he's up in seventh place he got that lucky dog award moved up to seventh oh boy skinner bounced off the wall getting off a two and then i'm not sure what was going on in between the 31 and the 01 but something up there bill how about robbie gordon's day that's just one car maybe he hadn't made contact with yet today but robbie has not said anything about his health so we're taking that as a good sign you talked about the food poisoning last stop four tires and fuel they lowered the track bar made an air pressure adjustment trying to give it more grip the car is a little free in the center these guys are having an outstanding yeah i think his best finish here is his 15th in all of his starts at martinsville he's he's having by far his best run here rob and robbie has been loose i mean that looks like it's a little bit more than a little loose to me so he's been he's been driving the heck out of that car today see rusty wallace hanging out i can't believe the 23's got another one for a flashlight 88 cars [Music] caution flags out how many left we're flats is that for 23. dale jarrett was running 13th when he got spun around in that jam up that's twice he's going to spin cycle today in the oops car yeah let's put oh oh s o oops oops uh ward burton will get the lucky dog all right persistence and there's kenny wallace with another left you want to sing that lucky dog little ditty for us again or only when i get it i say oh okay you'll be racing next saturday in atlanta that's garbage series we're gonna race a look at what happened forward from jeremy mayfield's view it's just that that jam up i mean you can't see down the racetrack very far here when they start stopping in front of you sometimes you don't get stopped quick enough the accordion factor recording factor comes into play and it's not a pretty tune and now the leaders made a pit stop all the car four or five cars laps down hit it but all leaders on the racetrack jeff gordon leads 125 laps to go three quarters of the way through the subway 500. [Music] you're ain't getting great forward fight it's kind of it starts it's like it's real solid a real rocky rock hard rock hard tires here so they bounce a little bit in the gas up off the corner so i wish i just could go back to that other set of tires i had before this or a different set of tires really car be a lot better if i can fix the if i can get to the middle better and start without being rolled over don't do things that will make it roll over i'll be fine if you roll maybe if you do anything to make it roll over do something that's going to put some weight on the left rear to counter it but uh you know i think you might end up getting it in the corner rolled over pushing so i don't know but then the changes haven't felt like the tires have been getting worse like we're going in the wrong direction today like that spring rate falling out is the wrong way i don't think so because i wasn't i mean i ain't got no worse or no better it just kind of depends this setting this that's probably the the toughest set in my opinion but um the to run with well i think it's just inconsistent tires i don't think it has anything to do with spring rates i think it's just kind of not all tires are made the same [Music] i really i'm really really tight on new tires we always have a caution and then i'm fine i don't know what to do you know what the logic is there but there's something behind it okay one to go this time continues with the subway 500 martinsville virginia just crossed the three-quarter mark of the race and we're under caution for the 12th time i just love when things happen between drivers in the championship and they start throwing barbs and comments at each other kevin harvick somehow made note that there was a website that was allowing you the opportunity to pre-order matt kenseth winston cup champion items the folks at roush racing said well yeah when you're in the hunt for a championship you have to design these things in advance you can't wait until the last minute but we didn't give anybody permission to start offering them uh for pre-orders and in fact that website has since been taken down this stuff from it but kevin said um let me see if i get the quote right here he said that the roush team having allowing somebody to do the pre-ordering was quote showing a lot of confidence confidence for an organization that screwed up championships in the past end quote oh yeah harsh words he doesn't hold anything back does he and of course again just to clarify that roush group didn't give anybody permission to do anything but you do have to start designing those things in advance and in fact roush racing president jeff smith came back and said you'd think if the 29 was in the hunt for the championship those things too and their eyes everywhere people are going to find that stuff how about it bill you hit it right on the button i talked to matt about that this morning he had no idea that stuff was being posted it's pre-orders for retailers it's not something you can order yourself you don't even pay for it if you do you get your money back but the thing about it is he said go talk to richard childress who's won six championships and ask him so i went to children's at the driver's speed he goes you have to order that stuff long in advance so you have the opportunity to prepare it get it out to retailers and have your merchandise ready for the banquet in new york so it was kevin harvick's car owner richard childress who said yeah you kind of have to do that but isn't it fun it's outstanding what junior is in jeopardy of losing the second spot jimmy johnson's 48 car is fast jeff gordon leads stale junior second jimmy johnson third tony stewart fourth ryan newman is fifth 23 cars on the lead lap very very few of them pitted under that last caution mostly guys toward the back end of the lead group mark martin stopped ricky craven casey mears joe nemechek and uh jeremy mayfield looks like he's trying to get it lined up ep i mean all of a sudden the a car just will not turn in the middle of the corner he gets in the middle before we've seen him turn and just go low he can't do that now well now remember junior and tony urey jr have said this car is set up for the long haul the first few laps they're not going to be very good but after a while they're going to be better than everybody marty i get that right you got it exactly right allen takes a little while for junior's car to come in much better when the tires are hot and sticky now they're a little bit cold he will be good at the end of this run matt rick hendrick has cars in the first and third position we have a spin trouble down the front stretch and also a lot of damage to that 7-7 car he's hit that wall hard and the 54 has gotten both the left front and right front corners no we didn't he didn't help that karma look the nose on that 77. now it may be the smallest track on the circuit but you're still crashing into something at better than you know 75 80 miles an hour oh yeah when you take a hit like that and these walls are just as hard here they are any place yeah there's proof so this is yellow number 13. and i know you're going to ask me this we're not even close i know because i know that i know check this out the radiator's broken in the 31 car has to be broken there's a lot of stuff broken on in front of that man 220 right now pits are open i'm gonna come in okay four come on all right let's see if we can dissect all this see blaney down on the left side robby bounced off the wall when he slowed down nowhere to go for robbie or dave lady for that matter looks like 54 and who was that [Music] so yellow number 13 out the record for most yellows in a 500 lap winston cup race here is 18. it's john and ready that he made contact with bp you're watching nascar [Music] [Music] [Music] got 16 gonna be coming outside [Music] [Music] okay one to go this time 108 laps to go right now bugs [Music] my car's coming inside nine wins here could have had a tent under the previous caution he told his driver jimmy johnson complimented about his day but also gave him a brief history about martinsville we can follow that 24 straight to victory lane if we need to yeah it's in four have to knock them out of the way if we wanted that's just how it's going to be here for the end so first you have to be gentlemen hopefully for everyone once upon a time i had two cars leading this race with three cars on the lead lap and they took each other out we had a hella just beat nobody before i don't want to have to see him i remember that remember ricky rudd and ken schroeder crashed off turn two yep i think rick was delivering a message there don't you you're welcome to pass him cleanly thank you jeff gordon leads dale earnhardt jr between gordon and his teammate jimmy johnson tony stewart ryan newman jeff burton rusty wallace back through seventh place 23 cars on the lead lap greg biffle got the lucky dog pass at that last caution he is now back on the same circuit with the race leaders [Music] see these guys up front here clearing the lap traffic pretty quickly that's important for them ward burton in 20th place he got a lucky dog pass last time and robbie gordon got a lucky dog pass earlier in the race but now he's got some heavy damage to his car dave yeah now it's a biology project dissecting the 31 car at the front end they're going to try to replace that radiator and send robbie back out robbie even though he wasn't feeling well at the start of this race gamely staying in the car he's having fun he's having fun he's got an open track in front of him and a pretty fast race car tommy stewart tried to close in on jimmy johnson see if he can pick up third spot meanwhile ryan newman the 12 car has worked his way up to the fifth position [Music] now really a lot of what the question becomes here where do the cautions fly in these final 100 laps [Music] they've all got enough fuel to go to the finish the question is will they stop for tires and if they do some of these other guys who were in the back of the lead lap now like mark martin and ricky craven for example that pitted under this last caution they won't stop no they're not going marty what's the 24 car what are they talking about doing i just asked robbie lumens that very question bps said will you fit again he said i don't know but most likely not i mean it's not what the 24 really is going to do it's what terry labonte or kurt bush or schroeder the guy's eighth ninth and tenth because they're not fast enough to pass the leaders right now so if the leaders pit obviously they have to make the call but if the leaders don't pit i think you come in for tires they're gonna run at seventh eighth or nine spot uh we say you never know what's gonna happen in martinsville we mean stay right until the checkered flag because drivers leading the most laps have failed to win nine of the last 10 races here here's the guy that's led the most laps today don't go away and he's got a pretty clean race car we look around and see a lot of damage to some of these cars but get in pretty good shape marty can you guys talk about jeff gordon leading the most laps he's done it five times this year his best finish in one of those races is fifth he has never won when he's led the most laps this year well that's not a good statistic don't tell him that i don't think i don't think he's going to back off and run second for a while and then though what was the thing he closed he looked up so we didn't have to at the end of countdown to green about drivers winning from the pole in both races here in martinsville long long time ago when that happened right 1964. busy busy oh kirkbush rusty wallace [Music] and no others everybody else dodges [Music] no it never does at martinsville let's see kurt might have gotten the radiator on his car there's steam pouring out of it and that's not out of the window we're talking about almost wrecked here in the booth careful wally well he got the right front corner earlier he's got the left both left side tires are flat so they'll have to pry that car up off the ground to get the jack under it [Music] and now caution with 96 laps to go if you're jeff gordon do you pit if you're dale jr do you pick i don't know we'll see no junior fakes is he coming um yup yes he is junior's in oh my goodness all of jeff burton is in this in all that track position that's a lot of track position ricky rudd kinseth casey mears 41. so lap 406 94 to go jeff gordon stays out dale jr pits i think the reason that junior pitted it i don't think he'd like this car i think they're going to make some changes marty vp you hit the nail on the head junior said i don't like this set of tires it's like nothing we've had all day long it's making the car bounce around on the racetrack i don't know what to say i just know i need new tires bill kevin harvick has complained that his car is all over the place wedge adjustment four tires top it off with fuel see if the four tires will get back to the front and continue to chase mckenzie 17 car second guessing themselves a little bit they thought maybe they should have stayed out but they came in they changed two right side tires little fresh rubber to take them to the end so obviously the question has been answered i mean if your car is not handling you know you need to come in this is the time to do it make some adjustments put tires on and now you're set for the finish 13 of the 29 lead lap cars 23 lead lap cars pitted what happens here with rusty rusty kind of slides up and they just tried to make it three wide you can't fault anybody there no no [Music] oh 97 cars spun on bare road lookout guys [Music] guys [Music] what's that all about i have no idea i think he's got an oil line water line something is leaking fluid and when he enter pit road the car spun could be a broken oil cooler it looks like there's a lot of fluid on the right rear tire when he spun and there's a lot of fluid on the racetrack at octane road now yep here he comes down pit road and around he goes and see all the look at all that fluid he's putting down [Music] boy that's scary good thing that was uh then and not when everybody was hitting race cars [Music] so kurt bush has taken his car to the garage and they're cleaning up all the oil and that's one reason that we have a pit road speed limit at 30 miles per hour but imagine what he would that would have happened if he'd been running 50 60 miles per hour yeah so caution out for the 14th time in the subway 500 pit road is closed while they clean up the oil curd bush kind of the meat in the race car sandwich take off getting style points for taking air too back to martinsville after this my name is sergeant mike lieber i'm currently assigned to pacalo training area on the big island of hawaii my mos is 51 tango it is technical engineering supervisor right now our job is to move 25 000 tons of rock to build a road what's so tough about that the rock is on a volcano [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so it's right side up too so we can jack get this radiator off four stains guys hey watch your feet chris i'm going to start moving here's what put us on to the 14th caution of the race car trying to take off was a 97 of kurt buscher right along with kevin harvick as he dives down goes to the inside see schrader there on the inside he get away with it race car weighs what 3 400 pounds it's not easy to pop a wheelie no [Music] yikes and ouch some of the lead lap cars pitted but many did not under this caution let's get the thinking from pit road marty allen exactly what robbie loomis and jeff gordon were worried about you were going to try and follow the eight whatever he did but he took tires you did not worried robbie well we're looking at the whole field behind it's not just they only saw three or four of them peel off there we got about 10 of them stuck in between here you know all year long being out front's the best place to be so we got to beat my chevrolet out there we're just going to say a prayer now over here matt well what a difference about nine hours make chad canash you had your car in position to win do you like where you sit strategy wise yeah i think right now we're in pretty good shape you know there's about nine cars behind us that didn't pit that last time it's gonna be pretty hard for some of those guys to get back up there even under long green flag runs so i feel like we're in pretty good shape we're gonna have to kind of wait and see what happens you know i'll tell you what these guys perform so well today on pit road you know this team blows racing guys they just when it's time to go they go you know we got got spun out it was looking pretty ugly it was looking real ugly this morning and you know now we're in pretty decent position i'm pretty pleased with this so we'll wait and see how things turn out their goal today was just a solid top 10 finish so far they're working on a solid top five bill with matt borland crew chief for ryan newman i really hesitate to ask you this question but what's the plan just have to wait and see what the leaders do here we'll probably stick with them and uh just see how it goes at the end he's pretty happy right now just have to see how many more yellows we get and how it all shakes out are better on the long runs matt seems to me he's uh pretty happy on the long runs the short run looks like we struggle a little bit to get going but after that it's pretty good and i'm sure you can probably make it on fuel huh i think so hey good luck marty tony harry jr can you make it from 12th with four fresh tires and win this thing yeah i think we can uh longest run anybody's made all day was when we were out there when we kind of got you up there on the pit stop deal with 96 laps so uh and the forward bite was just starting to go away so you know uh last year it come down to the same deal that cautious come out with 100 to go and everybody fit in this year only about 13 of us did so uh we couldn't win the race we were so we just went ahead and decided to get our four fresh tires and make a couple changes and we'll win this thing keep in mind the longer the a car goes the better he gets dave kurt bush's top 10 in points he stays in the car because his team is going to try to repair everything inside here i can't even begin to tell you what the problems are but oil leaking from the car they're going to try to fix it and send it back out you know tony junior said exactly the thing they tried to win the race and they couldn't win the way they were right so come in make the adjustments do it try to win there you go adam boy so dale jr we start 12th when we get this thing back going after the big cleanup let's tell you how we've gotten to this point in the subway 500 better than 90 000 fans on hand and the race got wild kind of early this lap 55 jimmy spencer spinning and one of the pre-race favorites rusty wallace got damaged then sterling marlin blocked up turn four kurt busch among those who had a tight squeeze trying to get through ryan newman into the spin cycle this was at lap number 80 no harm no foul dale jarrett going around one of two times he spun today robbie gordon on kyle petty that wasn't very nice jeff green said what are you messing with me and my boss for rusty's bad day continued he got turned around in this turn four tangle jimmy johnson we just heard his crew chief chad canal say we got spun out that was where it happened that was back at lap 138 kenny wallace ward burke they're teammates they're both in the top ten they got tangled up together ruined a good day for bill davis racing tony stewart with a close call on pit road but he got away with it matt kemp's at the championship leader this is a huge break for him made contact with jason leftward thought he had a left rear tire going flat and the caution came out for this kenny wallace spin it left 2 30 and kenseth was able to change the tire without losing any time on pit road here was the big controversy of the race so far some of the leaders didn't catch that pit road was open when they came by the entry to the pit lane this was at lap 231 on that caution so jeff gordon dale jr and kurt busch didn't stop that's kurt bush's crew chief jimmy finnegan expressing his displeasure though replays showed that flag was waving green with plenty of time for them to make the move to pit road jeff gordon the leader making a close call through some traffic this was uh robbie gordon having a top 10 finish ruined and now the most recent caution kurt busch rusty wallace air time and then kirk cutting an oil cooler out of his car spinning in his own oil and making a big mess around the racetrack that they're still working to get finished cleaned up oh man it's been boring yeah what we said we said at the top of our show lots of action at martinsville we've had it today that's why they've got 90 000 people here 14 caution flags eight different leaders jeff gordon has been the dominant drivers led 228 of the 417 laps bernard jr terry the bonnie kurt bush joan evenchak rusty wallace kevin harvick tony stewart the other leaders and we're setting up for a sprint to the finish who knows what's going to happen in these final 82 laps you're watching nascar on nbc i break for yard sales i break for animals i break for uh chocolate my grandkids boys i break for little old lake [Music] [Music] [Applause] virginia's still under caution while they clean the track and their road in the 29th pit you guys decided to stop todd white uh we had just a couple bad stops here in a row lost a track position we just keep digging ourselves in a bigger hole every time we go right here we still feel like we couldn't uh really have tires good enough to go all the way to the end because the last time we stopped was like 355 so i mean we're not stopping again regardless of what happens for the rest of the day but uh we're just trying to get better i mean the car's pretty good now but it's track position killing us yeah it's been tough to maneuver through it today yeah it is there's nobody cutting anybody any slack and uh you're going to have a really good car to get up through there so hopefully half them will eliminate yourself and we'll capitalize on it all right good luck chasing a championship chasing mackenza it's cool isn't he yeah matt bill tony stewart trying to solidify his fifth straight top five finish something he hasn't done in over a year khrushchev breaks up benelli lounging on top of the pit box so how is the race car it's not bad we're trying to save our tires right now we've been getting loose um on the exit it's been turning really good all day so we're kind of committed to staying out until the end unless we get a good long run and then there's 50 to go or something um we may come so we're just trying to take care of our stuff right now and see if we can bring this home depot monte carlo home in a good strong top five and who knows what'll come towards the end there maybe we can win another one but you know though how you can lose one on pit road here as well yeah i i've i've been there before and believe me it's going back through my mind every lap here just sitting here but uh we should be all right today a year ago april the driver actually made the call they pitted while leading he had to fight all the way through traffic dave and he finished third with robbie riser now cringy for matt kenseth and he's checking on something right now it's been a work hard day for these guys they've been back in the pack all day long track position um track position hasn't been very good for you guys all day long you came in and changed two tires robbie what's the car like to the end well i don't know we haven't run through tires all day long so uh we've got the car handling a lot better than we did earlier in the race and uh hopefully we'll be able to move up from here you told me you didn't run two tires here in the spring did you i mean two tires change in the spring yeah we haven't never done that here uh we did it trying to think when we did it but it's like three three races ago and it worked for us and i'm just hoping it'll work for us today what about matt getting through this traffic he's been bogged down pretty much all day hasn't he well when you get in the back here you just kind of work hard to get yourself you know through the traffic and you just can't get you just can't move forward and uh you know lab cars got you bottled up and you just uh pretty much ride there so you know we're fortunate enough to work our way up through from where we were so i'm happy with with that hopefully we can go the rest of the way here thanks robbie so far today their luck has been good on the accident side they're just trying to limit the damages as far as position loss alan yeah they missed all the trouble we saw when they had the contact with the zero car tire and the caution came out and all that it's been a solid day but solid sorry we touched on this little earlier bp and i'm about these yellows have really hurt earth oh yeah and harvick right now on trying to get that track position back i got something for both you guys fun fear factor is for wally a wild new fear factor monday at 8 7 central and bp got one for you las vegas i like that show me and james khan yeah i like that uh and you like vegas too yeah i do but i don't like fear factor all those bugs man monday night 8 7 central on nbc have you ever tried a bug well then don't knock it until you try something that's good what's the what's the what's the thing that you've eaten that i would consider the grow system no don't even no no don't go there let's talk about why they didn't throw the green flag why didn't they throw the green play uh waved it off to get another lap or so through the oil dry i believe and they may have spotted something right in front of the flag stand too okay he's got a good view mm-hmm somebody rush out there and pick it up so i don't see what's going to happen here got 75 laps to go got a cleanup truck coming out from pitt road so they'll get that cleaned up and get going jeremy mayfield was just penalized to lap a lap what'd he do for speeding on pit road i get this right while pit road was closed and while it was covered with oil and they asked the cars to to give the people trying to clean up the oil some room and so forth and did not like the way he was proceeding to make several pit stops there under that caution so okay he'll go back to 27th place and try and fight and get a lucky dog award here if he can got what one two he's got to fight hard where five six seven cars are lapped down what they picked up off the front straightaway was potentially a piece of brake rotor that's not good no we see it rolling around the racetrack just just before the start finish line and that could definitely puncture a tire and he's still out there hey ward your minus rear right rear brake well if that's a brake that might not be that much i don't think he'll be a brake river he wouldn't be still out there that might be a piece of rubber hot smoke and rubber off one of these cars you'll find out real quick if it is yeah yeah yeah brakes are something you need here one more lap and we'll go back racing all right so we got guys who pitted under this caution like dale earnhardt jr starting back in 12th place and the guys who stayed on the racetrack in the first 11 spots jeff gordon heading the field so with what will be 73 laps can junior get from 12th spot wrestle the lead away from jeff gordon well jeff gordon's going to have a clean racetrack ahead of him so he's going to be a lot faster than dale jr even though dale jr is on better tires and the problem is junior is in 12th position but he's actually starting 24th right a double line he's 12th row [Applause] mike skinner in the 0-1 the first one not on the lead lap 22nd position up to the inside of the race leaders [Music] gordon clears [Music] you're right not so fast he's got him now and third place tony stewart see mike skinner is the position that he needs to run hard because he needs to stay in this position one lap down first car one lap down the caution flag comes out he gets a lap back lucky dog that's right by the way we've set a new record here today for lucky dogs no no well yeah probably have that but uh 113 laps of caution new record winston cup racing here in martinsville now bp they took the green first lap [Music] jeff gordon was 2.4 seconds ahead of earnhardt jr now just three laps because what we talked about he's four seconds behind junior uh [Music] why would he do that you ask well he's 10th in the nascar wasted cup championship standings and it's very close from 10th on back difference in money in those positions back there we're not talking about millions but we're talking about [Music] thousands and kurt's problems are not finished no but his car may be yeah believe me kurt hopes so i believe he'll be done for the day now oh look at that is that oil coming off the back of it or is that from earlier well they would have found it yeah i think that if it was a current condition i think yeah so kurt bush will be done for the day and looks like he's going to finish back somewhere around 39th place and that will be four of five races [Music] [Music] okay this is a break for junior some of those guys they get to erase that six seconds now man yeah we have plenty of mayhem here at martinsville we have today but that's why all the 91 000 seats around this racetrack are pretty well full [Music] but now junior needs for this thing to restart you know go out pick up that debris let's restart because we let gordon and johnson ride around on the cars like four or five more laps that helps them helps their tires they don't wear the tires as much junior picked up two three spots there with that little run of green before the yellow marty gallon but the cautions are really hurting them here they need to go green they need the longer it goes green the better his car gets they're encouraging him on the radio to drive it in deeper use more brakes they're confident he has a lot of brakes left but uh the crew just thinking he's not driving it hard enough into the corner right now trying to tell him listen you've got plenty of brakes left use them so junior back in ninth spot now we don't hear that much here martin no no and we'll go from the shortest track on the nascar winston cup circuit to one of the fastest next weekend atlanta motor speedway saturday tnt one o'clock eastern time the aaron's 312. wally will be in the field plus that incredible race for the nascar bush series championship five drivers within 44 points of the lead then next sunday home depot presents nascar winston cup racing on nbc coverage starting at noon eastern time with discover card countdown to green you know who's going to fill in for you next weekend no i don't jamie mcmurray maybe yes he will well i talked to him this morning he was so excited about watching you race and giving you a hard time wally yeah well that's what everybody can't wait to get up here to do that that's right that'd be fun there he is he's not having the best of days today but he is in the top ten i mean he's in eighth place missing a right front fender that's probably not bad bill what do you got well just thinking about jeff gordon being out front here going for the sweep at martinsville as you talked about fred lorenzon the only driver to win the poll for both races in the same season and win the race here jeff's out front and his pit crew helped get him there here are the guys that got the job done hi i'm robbie loomis krucci for city florida jay lupo front windshield cleveland ohio craig curion frontier carrier from sanborn new york shane arsenal front tire changer swiggle new york jeff cook jackman charlotte north carolina my name's steve la tart i'm the rear tire carrier i'm from cornish maine shane church rear tire changer rushville indiana jeff craven gas man high point north carolina caleb heard catch can go ask you virginia if jeff gordon stays out front and wins this race it's more than a victory when i talked about talked to him out of the discover card countdown to green earlier today and asked him if they could finish as high as second in the points you could see him light up it's obviously something they thought about the championship may be out of the picture but jumping to second certainly is not you can tell jeff's been down on the bottom of the racetrack all day left side does not have a mark yeah the right sides all tore up well that tore up and a lot of tire marks and scuff marks restart with 60 laps to go ricky craven in the 32 trying to get one of three laps he's lost back from the race leader [Music] that'd have been a tough day for the tie [Music] rod jeff gordon leading jimmy johnson's second tony stewart third ryan newman fourth terry labonte in fifth then ken schroeder in sixth followed by bill elliott jamie mcmurray dale earnhardt jr and jeff burton [Music] matt kenseth runs in 14th kevin harvick in 16. [Music] so not spectacular but solid for kenseth where his championship is concerned today to this point to this point a lot of things can happen in 60 laps here in martinsville how about that straighter in the sixth position these guys when they get to a racetrack that you can adjust the car mechanically they do well don't they man they sure do benny kenny schroeder hasn't won a whistling cup races 1991 he's never won a short track winston cup race but this team keeps making gains by leaps and bounds a quiet day but a very consistent day currently runs the sixth position kenny has not had a top five since 1998 they are just knocking on that door who knows maybe today is when he breaks back in a top 10 finish here in the april race and you can kind of tell that where this team is lacking besides the sponsorship department that they're trying to find to fill up those quarter panels is the sponsorship money doesn't allow you to do the engineering work that some of the other teams can and here's the stat i'll back that statement up with their average start and finish on the short tracks is twice what it is on the bigger tracks for the engineering stuff aerodynamics all that stuff really comes into play and again they're only a one-car team versus a roush with a five-car team henry with a three-car team team owners bethan morgenthau and tony morgenthau out of the miami beach area funding this car basically out of their pockets with some associate sponsorship help during the season still trying to find that backing that'll let them take the team up to the next level they took uh you know schrader owns a dirt track outside of st louis i-55 raceway at peably missouri they took beth ad out there with some race cars and let her go drive around and have a play day last week and schroeder said he's very respectable behind the wheel also i say schroeder's a pretty good short track driver yeah top two kind of close and close together kansas running in 14th position harvick right behind him remember charlotte when harvick was kind of messing around with kenzit when he was around him [Music] and all these guys are racing for position rudd in the 21 and martin in the six little contact between tony raynes and jeff green there in front of this pack the whole saved it so harvick by matt kenseth by ricky rudd now working on mark martin that'll be for 13th place remember that uh kent has just got two tires on that last pitch oh hey what oh jeff crane's getting pushed around for sure he did that time and this is where the tires are going to start to shine for the guys to change tires and the guys that didn't that is one of those guys that they're on the tires for a long time their lap times are really going to start showing jeremy mayfield being black flagged a lot of smoke from behind the 19 car and he reports to good road they'll try and figure out what it is going for the hood pins that's not good [Music] kenseth trying to fend off casey mears for 16th place i have to imagine that at a track with this much traffic with collapse winding down and people starting to be less patient and bounce off each other that's got to be a pretty tense time for a team leading the championship oh yeah i would think so i think he's just really won't see those wide open spaces of the atlanta motor speedway he wants this thing to be over right now he'll take this 16th and just quietly go on down the road coming up after nascar on nbc continuing coverage of the 2003 gravity games the bike street finals this week plus the men's wakeboarding finals the 2003 gravity games next after nascar here on nbc all right junior goes by schrader four seconds behind he's got some reasonable clean race track let's see how fast he can run now meanwhile what's going on with 97 dave well maybe i just wanted to know we did try to talk with kurt he calmly exited his hauler by himself took a long walk down pit road and left the speedway i asked him if he'd like to talk to us he said no okay i can understand why yeah i don't blame you yeah it's been kind of a tough week curt was a big cubs fan that didn't work out for him [Music] and then he had then he had a really lousy day here too and last time by junior i looked at the score and monitor and he was faster than jeff gordon but only marginally yeah he's got to make up a little under four seconds i think he can make it up just depends on how quick he gets by the cars between him and jeff let's check the speeds at the line we'll see the top ten how about that trying to get a spot away from ryan newman that'll be fourth place terry labonte led for 40 laps earlier in the race started 31st today crew made a pit strategy call and black 107 did not hit when the other front runners did and that got in their track position and now while he messes around with lion newman here comes dale jr to mess around with him marty junior's cleared off the lap traffic trying to track down terry labonte said the car is coming to him he also likes this set of tires much better so i believe the call bp was the right one couldn't have won the race on the old set this set much better for the eight car and he's got 40 laps not long dave this five cars got a good run going it's really not bad vp they put it on about lap 355 with the leaders and made a uh adjustment because the car was a little bit loose off the corner they made a chassis adjustment and the car is good to the end even though he's getting pressure from junior phil ryan newman slowly trying to reel in the leaders the car is pretty good staying free from traffic but may not have enough time to get back up front he said to matt borland earlier you can see the pattern that's developing he goes yep i'm watching it too they thought the race was coming to them with the cautions but that's not the case right now the eight looking inside the five got to be for fifth place and bill's speaking of traffic i'll tell you what the leaders are going to be in traffic pretty quick and that's going to make a big difference yeah it is [Music] that's uh second time this junior's just kind of nipped the back bumper to terry labonte in the middle of the corner they want terry's getting a great fight off that corner oh junior that drives her in there that time yeah terry pointed him by on that one i think the second time he got hit he got the message faster so junior to fifth 38 laps to go 3.9 seconds behind jeff gordon jeff gordon's last pit stop was at lap 355. dale jr pitted at lap 406. but once again just like ryan neumann we've talked about so many times so many cautious like has saved with jeff gordon jimmy johnson tony stewart all these guys save hot laps on those tires let's check speeds at the line again now the junior is free of some of that traffic yep eight cars fast can he get through them and these are not going to be easy passes he's going to have a hard time passing ryan newman and he's gonna have a hard time passing tony stewart uh i think he'll start using the bumper if he has to he's gonna i mean he can't waste time with him he's gonna have to be aggressive get the two-lap rule yeah as he lays the bumper toe up [Music] two lap rulers you hold me up for two laps yeah when you have any tires it's kind of like okay here i am and i'm coming through go ahead marty one of the things that some of the eight uh guys on the a team and i were just noticing is that because of the fresher tires junior's able to work that lower line better than most everyone else that's where he's trying to pass everybody that's certainly where he's getting all the speed from coming off that low line real hard he's not able to cut under newman though no not with us earlier today this racetrack the bottom lane of this racetrack was ground about a year ago kind of evening up the grip look the bottom lane has a little less grip the top lane is the longer way around and so that's why you see guys like newman running up off the bottom of the racetrack where you might think would be the quicker way around what's ryan's saying bill well it's what they're saying to him benny they're saying they keep telling him how close the eight is getting one car length inside your quarter then they told ryan try and stay low if you can he just came back with one word loose well he's gonna be loose because the eight cars got the rear bumper jacked up a little bit [Music] junior just can't get that lane underneath it it's just i think it's about time before he pushes us to that yeah because he you know like said he gotta go newman's not giving up oh he isn't ryan [Music] junior about crashed and looks like the 49 car i thought he was going to buy junior terry the body jumped out of the gas ken schrader got alongside him that's for sixth and seventh spot and traitor not able to make that past stick hasn't stopped trying [Music] well terry's gonna hold him off but that might have just been that one slip might have been what does ian junior's chance to catch jeff gordon if he doesn't get a caution flag because right now he's five seconds behind jeff gordon and he still has to pass three cars to get to him let's try this again he said [Music] now get that grip off the corner 12 parts getting off the corner pretty good kevin harvick trying to pick off 10 spot from jeff burton looks like he's going to be able to do it he's trying and just watching while we're looking at this also jeff gordon has caught the tail end of the field and has begun gonna begin to get bogged down into some lap traffic so now is when you have that responder up there doing a really good job trying to get these guys to give you a lane the car's a lap down or more [Music] i'll tell you what we found out this year 2003 ryan newman driver 12 car he doesn't he doesn't ask for much he doesn't give much he just got [Music] junior just can't hold that bottom lane off of turn four newman's doing a heck of a job considering the tire difference right now on both those cars junior really gets it sideways that time when he jumped on the gas well that's determination that's you really have to tip your cap to that yeah that 12 car does it every week yep [Applause] here's junior's engine just jumping in uh rpm spun the tires a little bit off the corner they broke traction [Music] pushing him oh this is good that's what you call applying pressure so marty why do you see him now i think i think he's running out of patience bp he said he won't move out of the way i clearly have a faster car but yeah i don't think ryan has to move out of the way in that situation make him pass you which is what ryan's doing he just got moved out of the way there's gotta move down the way there yeah we'll see what happens when they get down to this corner [Music] you better get away from yeah that's right you better be fast and you know that if you do that to somebody you can say what i better get going payback's coming if you don't because you live by the sword you die by the sword so junior up to fourth place now but what was that about 20 laps yeah he just he lost time unless the yellow comes out and closes the pack up enough time no so now ryan newman left to try and fend off terry the body to hang on to the top five finish kevin harvick trying to pick up another spot put a little more distance between himself and matt kansas at the finish that's ninth place he's trying to take from bill elliot and he's got him the harvick 29 car has had a very good race car all day he just got mired back in the pack lost that track position and just has not been able to get it back had a left front lug nut hang on a pit stop at lap 355 dropped him back to 12th place then and that was the track position he lost that he hasn't been able to make back up this pack hasn't slowed jeff gordon down as much as i thought it might he's really moved through them pretty cleanly he's getting a lot of um courtesy from the other drivers and that that's uh the benefit you have look when you're the leader [Music] they're going to be looking for you you know the leader behind you you don't worry about the third place or the fourth place car so much as you do the leader [Music] let's check in on our top 10 drivers with 18 laps to go marty jeff gordon is going for the perfect 2003 record at martinsville allen two poles and two wins last time he pulled off a season sweep at a racetrack believe it or not 1998 at rocky m he's only done it three times in his career going for his fourth matt jimmy johnson running second also thinking about the bigger picture entered today 15 points only 85 markers out of second currently running in the second position his car was tight tried to adjust it with brake bias but they need a stop on pit road to really fix it meanwhile tony stewart's car still tight trying to knock down another solid top five finish marty junior's trying to do all he can with those 57 lap pressure tires easy in straight up that's all they're saying he's saying nothing on the radio bill ryan newman started seventh on the grid fourth in the championship standings currently running fifth they may not win today but they'll go home feeling like winners dave terry labonte pressuring newman celebrating his 200th short track stop start in style matt only two previous starts this year with this carpet jimmy mcmurray it's finished third and tenth knocking down another top 10 finish but right now his car is tight and he's also starting to feel a little sick due to carbon monoxide bill you might think kevin harvick's radio isn't working but he's just not using it the only thing on the radio the spotter clear as he works his way through the field matt driver nine running in the ninth position bill elliot hasn't set a whole lot on the radio just focus concentrating his spotter 10 feet away the bush driver telling him whatever you've done over the past three or four laps keep doing it you are picking up some time marty that start to the day for jeff burton got better then it went bad again he said i'm so loose right now i can't do anything with this thing dave how about this dale jarrett running 11th crashed and qualifying penalized on pit road spun on the racetrack amazing run for these guys 17 of matt kenseth not so good this time worse and worse this run two tires did not work for these guys don't look for him to try it again anytime soon kenseth back to 15th place just behind him on the racetrack ken schrader would you believe oh had to make an unscheduled pit stop just a minute ago matt really a heartbreaker for ken schrader and the vam team started 18th solidly in the top ten he had a flat tire allen had to come in for two right side tires and uh has dropped him 23rd back to 23rd place not on the lead lap matt kenseth is trying his best to get by the 21 car because that is three more points if he can just do it kevin harvick has moved up to seventh while we watch matt kenseth be overtaken by ken schroeder and jeff gordon continue to slice through the field he's gotten through this traffic very cleanly he's just put his teammate joe nemechek back a lap down or a lap down so nemo check the 20th place car now a lap down to the race leader it's funny this race opened with a long stretch of green flag racing that jeff gordon dominated it's going to close with a long stretch of green flag racing that jeff gordon is apparently going to dominate he's got to be careful passing these lap cars how many times today have we seen a fast car rub up against a slow car and puncture a tire if that happens right now jimmy johnson is only one second behind him yeah you see 38 car plays over [Music] and you're right bp you need to give these guys plenty of room here's elliot sadler jimmy johnson just not able to close up any more than about seven eight tenths of a second behind jeff gordon and one good thing for jeff is that these guys he's following that he's putting a lap down or more a running single file they're not racing side by side for position right now jeff gordon started on pole today dominated the early laps of this race then got kind of shuffled back in traffic had a problem on a pit stop that cost him some time on one of his early pit stops dug back out from that then his crew got in the lead off the set of pit stops and put him back out in front and he just hasn't yielded that's six points 17 car goes by 21. that's three by the sixth that's another three could be big before the year is over thank you mark and for jeff gordon now five laps to go less than five to go jeff gordon has finished fifth the last four straight weeks and his record here at martinsville is is pretty solid 11 top fives 15 top tens in 21 races here and junior has called tony stewart for the third position so i think the tire change was the right move for junior i think he spent a lot of time around the 12 card like you talked about that really hurt he lost probably 15 laps doing that [Music] he's in a hurry to get by tony too he may help him along as well he was running jumping on the gas a little bit hard early he was running second when he hit it restarted 12. he's going to probably finish third or fourth he's really digging right now i mean that time he drove the car in a little bit too deep the car pushed up the racetrack so he's driving that car hard right now but let's talk about the man who is about to take the white flag jeff gordon [Music] last win for jeff gordon was here at martinsville in april had some troubles over the summer that dropped him to sixth in the nascar winston cup championship standings one lap away from the checkered flag good pit work a good handling car track position where they needed it gonna be the recipe for victory today for this 2014 and a season sweep in martinsville for jeff gordon as he wins the subway 500 by one second over his teammate jimmy johnson 311 of the 500 laps jeff gordon will look like today pretty dominating isn't it at least rick hendrick did not have two we're going two cars price each other at mars well this time that monday morning meeting will be a little bit more pleasant than the last time oh i think it'd be pretty happy first season sweep in martinsville since rusty wallace did it in 1994 jeff gordon with his fifth victory at this track he led the final 295 [Music] laps [Music] you told me uh this morning april was a long time ago today same feelings and were you worried about junior where the fresh tires really were you know i watched junior that's the longest 50 laps i think i ran there at the end of the race but really got to thank rick kendrick like say hello to papa joe at home and john hendrick it's just this team has been incredible the strength they've had they showed through the tough times and come back here and being victory at martinsville i love martinsville it's a special place really nice to be here robbie's hometown about 30 miles down the road win number 64 for jeff gordon in his career nice little burn out there standing still in place that'll be our chevy winning moment jeff gordon today's winner in the number 24 monte carlo jeff will tell you the only thing that comes close to monte carlo's reputation on the track is its reputation on the street more champions depend on chevy we'll be there that's pretty cool shot as he drives in through the smoke to victory lane now he's had a lot more tire than we thought manny he must have [Applause] he definitely laid down some rubber didn't he second win of 2003 for jeff gordon and matt kenseth coming up with a 13th place finish kevin harvick ground up seventh championship gets a little bit tighter here today now just four races to go [Music] [Applause] when world will all those people come from so quickly well let's see you got your photographers and you got your team members actually two teams yeah all right while we wait for jeff to get ready to talk to us let's hear from matt and tony stewart started the day in the 16th position and tony look like an old school day kind of bumping gouge but a semi-clean day for you yeah i'll tell you what's probably the the cleanest day we've had here at martinsville we uh you know we started at 16th and just got our way up in the top five and the guys had excellent pit stops and you know that's what it took today i mean we had a good car that we kept fighting a loose condition all day but uh finally got it decent at the end just wasn't as good as the 48 and the 24 and the eight quickly a new carbon monoxide filter how do you feel i could do another 500 laps right now i mean i think uh i really want to plow and thank nascar i mean they really worked hard trying to help you know make this sport safer for all of us and you know this is probably the worst place as far as carbon monoxide just because the air just doesn't get out of here so i really want to thank nascar for helping out and all the work they've done just you know not to make the show better but just to make the drivers safer and make us feel better in the cars tony stewart third to bill weber where jeff gordon on the front stretch climbs out after sweeping both races at the same track for the fourth time in his winston cup career and it's another season of double-digit wins for jeff gordon i just got a pepsi shower i need the towel after that that's okay congratulations let's talk about pit road first of all oh here's a car owner

Channel: Racins Fun

Views: 3,966

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Id: dRwQBsfrdWA

Length: 241min 14sec (14474 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021