Matt Kenseth stands in the garage area during practice for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway. Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Joey Logano’s pants may not be on fire, but his ears might be burning after Matt Kenseth accused the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford of being less than forthcoming in his assessment of last Sunday’s fateful wreck at Kansas Speedway.
Logano insists he didn’t dump Kenseth on purpose with less than five laps left in the Hollywood Casino 400, a race Kenseth desperately needed to win to earn a berth in the Eliminator Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Logano won the race. Kenseth finished 14th. And the Joe Gibbs Racing driver didn’t think much of Logano’s characterization of the decisive wreck as “hard racing.”
“Someday he might mature a little bit,” Kenseth said after Friday’s opening NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Talladega Superspeedway, site of Sunday’s CampingWorld.com 500. “But, first of all, he should have stopped running his mouth…
“And number two, he’s lying when he said he didn’t do it on purpose, because he lifted (my) tires off the ground, offset to the left, and he’s too good a race car driver to do that by accident.”
For practical purposes, Kenseth is in the same position he found himself last week—needing a victory to advance to the Eliminator Round. With victories at Charlotte and Kansas, Logano already is locked into the Chase’s third round.
Win Or Bust For Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. comes to Talladega 11th in the Chase standings, four points in front of Matt Kenseth and 31 behind Martin Truex, Jr. in eighth place, the last transfer position into the Chase’s Eliminator Round.
Though there are far-fetched scenarios that would enable Earnhardt to advance without a victory, a Talladega win on Sunday is by far the most realistic way for Earnhardt to keep his title hopes alive.
Toward that end, Earnhardt has a straightforward plan.
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“We’re just going to go out there and practice and work on the car and do what we need to do today,” Earnhardt said on Friday at Talladega. “Qualifying is (Saturday). We’ll try to do as good a job as we can there, and when the race starts, run up front and try to stay toward the lead.
“I think it’s important to be in the lead in the last 50 laps of the race, so we’re going to try to be there.”
Earnhardt also applauded NASCAR’s move to limit the number of possible green-white-checkered-flag finishes to one for Sunday’s race.
“I thought three was a lot,” Earnhardt said. “I still think three is a lot—anywhere at any race. One attempt was kind of the norm, if anybody ever did that in racing in the last 100 years. One attempt seemed to be plenty. And I thought that was a good move for NASCAR, not only considering what happened in Daytona (with Austin Dillon’s wreck in July), but just one attempt.
“We want to finish under green. We should hopefully finish under green without the opportunity of a green-white-checkered. But if there is a problem where we have to run extra laps, they’ll be one attempt, and that should satisfy not only the fans, but the drivers and everybody involved.”
Reddick Needs Wins To Make Up Ground
In recent weeks Ford driver Tyler Reddick has fallen out of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series lead, thanks largely to a 19th-place finish at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and a 15th-place run at New Hampshire.
Now third in the standings and 16 points behind series leader Erik Jones, Reddick knows believes he can make up ground in short order, if he can find his way back to victory lane. The Brad Keselowski Racing driver has two wins this season but none since Dover in the year’s sixth event.
“I think to be able to truly win the championship we’re going to have to win a couple races,” Reddick said on Friday at Talladega, site of Saturday’s fred’s 250. “We’ve won two races early in the year and hit a stretch there where we weren’t in the right position to be able to win a race, but we were able to get top fives and be able to stay pretty close with those other two (Jones and second-place Matt Crafton).
“The last couple races, consistency-wise, we’ve made a few mistakes and we’ve had bad races, which we haven’t really had all year long, so we put ourselves in position where we have to win, but I feel like it’s no different than any other weekend we’ve come into. We’ve always come with the same mind-set, to win that race at that given event.”
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