Kenseth’s Win a Cautionary Tale

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was going to win the Auto Club 300 the easy way Saturday at California Speedway, by running out front.

Then he was going to win it the hard way, by coming back from a lap down and overhauling Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth in the closing laps of the NASCAR Busch Series race.

Then Todd Bodine spun and hit the wall with two laps left, bringing out the caution flag, and Earnhardt wasn’t going to win it at all.

Instead, Kenseth did, after figuring early in the race that he’d be lucky to make to his first pit stop in his ill-handling Chevrolet.

“I was very surprised,” he said. “I didn’t expect to win this race. We were a long way off [with the chassis setup] and the car was very loose. . . . I was on the edge of disaster the whole run to the first pit stop.”

That involved 31 harrowing laps and all the while, Earnhardt, in a very well-behaved Chevy, was running away with the race over the two-mile banked track.

Kenseth hung in there, though, his crew making “major adjustments” at every pit stop, ran with the leaders all day and, when Earnhardt came to grief, was able to outrun Winston Cup driver Burton for the unexpected victory.

Bodine’s late wreck robbed the race of what might have been a spectacular finish, but even Earnhardt had to acknowledge that he might not have been able to pass Burton and Kenseth had the last two laps been run under the green flag.

“It’s one thing to catch ‘em,” he said. “It’s another to pass ‘em.”

Earnhardt, who beat Kenseth for the series championship last season, was a convincing leader for more than half the race, running up leads of four and five seconds. But after a green-flag pit stop, on which he lost third gear while downshifting, he erred big-time trying to get past Burton on Lap 119.

Actually, Earnhardt was trying to get by Burton and Hank Parker Jr.’s lapped car at the same time.

“I didn’t know which way [Parker] was going and he was racing real hard,” Earnhardt said. “He motioned me and I thought he was going high but then he was coming low.”

And Earnhardt was pinched. And then he was sliding. He almost clipped Burton, then went spinning into the infield. Fortunately, he didn’t hit anything, but the excursion cost him a lap.

He got it back 10 laps later, when a three-car crash brought out the caution flag again and he was able to come around and tuck in at the back of the field. When the green flag flew again, Earnhardt took off. In four laps, he went from 10th to fifth. Two laps later, he was third, behind the leading Kenseth and the second-place Burton.

But that was as far as it went. With 10 laps left, another caution flag disrupted the proceedings and when the green flew with five remaining, Earnhardt, without third gear, was no match for Kenseth and Burton on the restart. Once up to racing speed, he caught them again in two laps, then Bodine crashed, leaving everyone to speculate on what might have been.

“I don’t know what would have happened,” Kenseth said. “It’s hard to pass in a Busch car on this track. We’re a little short of horsepower, compared to a Winston Cup car, and if you’re not out in front, you’re always running in somebody else’s dirty air. It’s easier to drive up front here. You can control your pace better. I’d rather run out front.”

No argument from Earnhardt.