The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Homestead provided championship energy
This is the first of a five-part series counting down the top five NASCAR Cup Series races of 2019.
The Ford Eco Boost 400, held at Homestead-Miami Speedway, held the potential to be the top race of the year, but because of two major pit-road boo-boos, it brings up the rear of the top-five field.
This was the final race of 2019 and only four drivers had a chance to win the Cup Series championship.
Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin won races in Round 3 to advance to the Championship Round. Kyle Busch, who was the regular-season champion, was the only driver to advance on points.
Truex, Hamlin and Busch all drive Toyotas for car owner Joe Gibbs, whose teams won 19 races over the 36-race schedule.
Harvick, who drives the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, won the first title under this format in 2014. Busch won in 2015, and Truex got his lone title in 2017. Hamlin was pegged as the sentimental favorite. He had scored six wins, including the season-opening Daytona 500, and was carrying momentum from his victory the previous weekend at Phoenix (ISM Raceway).
Busch was cast as the longshot, since his last victory was in early June.
This finale on this 1.5-mile oval promised to be nothing short of a 267-lap shootout among the series’ top drivers and teams.
Harvick led early, but as the sun faded, so did the handling of his race car, especially on long runs. There were no yellow flags during the last 101 laps of competition.
Truex suffered the first pit-road casualty. He brought the No. 19 Toyota in for service and his pit crew bolted right-side tires to the left side of his race car.
The weird mistake forced Truex back to the pits under green-flag conditions to have his tires rotated into the correct position.
He went from the lead pack, gunning for the win and title, to 13th place and one lap down.
“Yeah, ultimately it was the loss of track position that bit us,” Truex said.
Truex tried to rally but wound up as the runner-up for the second straight year.
With Harvick fading and Truex behind, it looked like the race would become a two-car shootout between Busch and Hamlin.
Hamlin’s team pushed in all the chips on his last pit stop. His pit crew put an enormous swath of black tape over the grille with the hopes of picking up extra speed by lessening drag.
Instead, the tape blocked air from the radiator, and the engine immediately began overheating. With boiling water shooting out of the radiator relief valve, Hamlin was forced to pit to have the tape removed.
That gave Busch a clear path to victory. He led the final 45 laps and beat Truex by 4.578 seconds.
“Everybody always says you never give up,” said Busch, who refused to listen to the pre-race naysayers. “We’re no different. We just do what we can do each and every week. Sometimes we may not be the best. Sometimes we may not have the right track position.
“We had a really good car, and I could race around and move around. That’s what’s so special about Homestead-Miami Speedway, is the ability to put on a show. I felt like we did that there racing those guys.
“It was a lot of fun to cap off such an amazing year.”