Qualifying
Qualifying this week showed NASCAR's parity as four different manufacturers made up the top five spots.
Brian Vickers claimed the pole in his Toyota while Jimmie Johnson started along side for Chevrolet in second. Jamie McMurray's Ford and Kurt Busch's Dodge made up row number two while Greg Biffle rounded out the top five in his Ford.
Vickers actually started the race from the back since he changed the engine before the race.
Drop Of The Green
Jimmie Johnson hooked up on the outside to lead the field back to the line over Jamie McMurray. He stayed out front until the first caution flew on lap 6 as a light rain slowed the competition. The cars continued under caution for 17 laps.
Jimmie Johnson again got away cleanly when the green flag returned as he dominated the early going.
Storylines
Another 500 miles at Auto Club Speedway are now behind us and once again not a single thing happened during the race. The fast and wide racing surface provided a nice safe race as there was only incident during the 500 miles.
The problem is that the racing at Auto Club Speedway just isn't interesting. The announcers tried to make it exciting but this race was never really in doubt. Passes for position were few and far between and there was very little competition.
Auto Club Speedway is the worst possible cookie-cutter race track gone wrong. This race track needs to be bulldozed. Lets start over and see if we can build an actual race track in Fontana, California.
Chasing The Checkers
The final round of pit stops came under caution. Matt Kenseth, JEff Gordon and Kyle Busch were the top three when the final green flag flew with 35 laps to go. They got free on the restart and ran single-file.
Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon were able to get away from Kyle Busch but Gordon continued to hunt Kenseth with twenty laps to go. Gordon gave it a shot but appeared to lose the handle and with ten laps to go he was losing ground to Kenseth.
Matt rolled it home to continue his perfect sweep of 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup point races. Kenseth is the first driver to sweep the first two races of the year since Jeff Gordon did it in 1997.
Top Ten
- Matt Kenseth
- Jeff Gordon
- Kyle Busch
- Greg Biffle
- Kurt Busch
- Denny Hamlin
- Carl Edwards
- Tony Stewart
- Jimmie Johnson
- Brian Vickers
The Points
Matt Kenseth's sweep of the first two races of the year allows him to extend his point lead.
The top twelve are now:
- Matt Kenseth
- Jeff Gordon -81
- Kurt Busch -91
- Tony Stewart -91
- Greg Biffle -117
- Clint Bowyer -119
- Michael Waltrip -121
- David Ragan -123
- Carl Edwards -125
- Juan Montoya -25
- Elliott Sadler -137
- David Reutimann -137
