Victory for Gordon
Jeff Gordon spun out Matt Kenseth with four laps to go, then held on to win Sunday’s Nextel Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway.
Fans showered the track with debris after the race, an apparent protest of Gordon’s racing tactics.
“I hate to win one like that,” Gordon said in Victory Lane. “Matt, he ran a great race.”
Gordon and Kenseth tangled earlier this year during a race at Bristol Motor Speedway, causing Gordon to shove Kenseth in a physical confrontation afterward.
Gordon denied that Sunday’s finish had anything to do with Bristol.
Gordon said he didn’t want to wreck Kenseth, insisting, “I wanted to race him.” But he added Kenseth was trying to block him.
“I’m not going to back down,” Gordon said. “I wanted to win.”
Kenseth crew chief Robbie Reiser said in a television interview: “We just got spun out, I guess.”
Second-place finisher Jeff Burton, a former teammate of Kenseth’s at Roush Racing, initially declined comment because he didn’t see what happened.
But after wincing during a television replay, Burton said, “Matt’s a hard-nosed racer, and there’ll be retribution for that, I’m sure.”
Burton said if NASCAR isn’t willing to issue rough driving penalties, it will be up to drivers to settle issues on the track.
“If NASCAR doesn’t handle it, then we need to handle it,” Burton said. “And that’s OK.”
Kenseth dominated the second half of Sunday’s race and appeared to be headed to his third victory of the season, but a sudden surge from Gordon in the closing laps allowed him to catch Kenseth in Turn 2. Gordon then appeared to tap Kenseth’s rear bumper with his front bumper.
Earlier in the race, Gordon closed in on Kenseth’s rear bumper on a restart with 30 laps to go. But Gordon couldn’t pull off the pass and Kenseth got away.
It was Gordon’s first victory at the suburban Chicago track, and his second victory of the 2006 season.
Montoya to race NASCAR
Juan Pablo Montoya, in his second season with Team McLaren in F1 competition this year after spending four seasons with the BMW Williams team in the world’s premiere racing series, was announced Sunday as the driver of the No. 42 Dodges owned by Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates.
Montoya has signed a multiyear contract and will drive full-time in Cup and companion Busch Series races beginning in 2007, Ganassi said. Montoya will become the first full-time driver to move from F1 to NASCAR.
“He is about racing and everybody around here is going to find that out. All he wants to do is race. That’s what I like,” said Ganassi.
Champ Car World Series
Life in the extremely fast lane continues to get better and better for A.J. Allmendinger.
A.J. Allmendinger, who just one month ago was unceremoniously fired by his race team, won his third consecutive Champ Car race when he held off Paul Tracy to capture the Molson Grand Prix of Toronto.
Not bad for a guy who was just plucked off the racing scrap heap.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” Allmendinger said.
Still, two-time defending champion Sebastian Bourdais leads in the standings with 191 points, followed by Allmendinger at 168.