Almirola ‘advances’ in NASCAR playoffs with Talladega victory
TALLADEGA, Alabama, Oct 15, (AP): Tony Stewart hired Aric Almirola because he believed the journeyman would win races for Stewart-Haas Racing. Almirola came close time and again this year but fell short.
CAR RACING
The boss made sure to keep Almirola’s spirits high every chance he got, including a pre-race pep talk Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
“He just keeps telling me, ‘Calm down, take deep breaths,’” Almirola said. “He’s like, ‘You’re going to win, I promise you. The day I told you I was going to hire you, I knew you were going to win races for my company. Put yourself in position, and it will happen.’”
He put himself in position Sunday to cap an absolute SHR rout at Talladega with an overtime victory that earned him an automatic berth into the third round of NASCAR’s playoffs.
It also snapped a 149-race losing streak for Almirola and atoned for his oh-so-close moment in the season- opening Daytona 500.
“I just love racing at Talladega and I came to the track with the mindset that we were going to go race and we were going to go give them hell, and if we wrecked, we wrecked,” Almirola said. “And if we win, we win. And we won. What a cool time to do it, too.”
More important, it showed that SHR arrived at Talladega prepared to work as a four-car team and ensure one of its drivers made it to victory lane.
The SHR Fords were untouchable all weekend. They swept qualifying, won every stage of Sunday’s race and used teamwork to pull away from the field. As the laps wound down, Kurt Busch led his three teammates in a straight line and pulled the train away from the pack, which couldn’t organize itself behind the SHR group to mount any sort of challenge.
But the dynamics changed when Alex Bowman spun with three laps remaining to bring out an ill-timed caution.
Now the race was going to overtime, and two of the SHR cars didn’t have enough gas for the extra laps.
First Busch’s fuel light began to flicker. Then Kevin Harvick got the same warning. As the field roared to the green flag, Harvick forfeited a shot at victory by pulling off the track to get enough gas to make it to the finish.
Busch stayed out as the leader with Almirola and Clint Bowyer looking for a slot to slip past him for the victory. Then Busch ran out of gas headed to the checkered flag and Almirola zipped by for his first victory of the season, first since joining SHR this year as the replacement for Danica Patrick, and first since the rain-shortened Daytona race in July 2014. It was the second Cup victory of his career.
Almirola was also leading on the final lap in overtime of the season-opening Daytona 500 until he was wrecked by winner Austin Dillon.
Almirola thought he had last week’s race at Dover won until a caution triggered by teammate Bowyer ruined his shot at the victory. A week later, he got his checkered flag and his stamp into the round of eight into the playoffs.