Kenseth Slips Past Burton Brothers

When the Brothers Burton did their Cain and Abel act with eight laps to run Saturday, Matt Kenseth found himself with the kind of opportunity that wins races.

He seized it coming off Turn 4 at California Speedway and beat Jeff Burton to the finish line by 0.603 seconds to win the Auto Club 300 for the second year in a row.

The Kenseth-Burton finish duplicates that of last year’s race, though in order only.

“Last year was pretty uneventful, I thought,” said Kenseth, who averaged 126.375 mph Saturday, earning $69,850 for his 300-mile, 150-lap trip. “We ran second or third all day long last year.”

Not Saturday.

“I thought Jeff Burton had the best car,” Kenseth said. “I can’t believe we’re here [in Victory Lane], but it was a heck of a race and there’s nobody up there in the stands that paid too much for a ticket today.”

Ward Burton paid a high price for trying to keep his brother behind him. Ward was leading the race with Jeff on his bumper on Turn 4 of Lap 142, and Ward moved his Pontiac high in both an effort to thwart the efforts of Jeff’s Ford to pass and to gain momentum for the front straightaway.

He was too high on the track, it turned out, and when Ward ran out of asphalt and tried to turn the car down the track, the rear end of his car refused to follow, instead seeking and meeting the wall.

“I’m not sure if I just got loose or something broke,” he said. “Either way, I hit the wall while leading the race. Very bad.”

Brother Jeff weighed in with his own close-hand observation.

“He spun out,” Jeff said flatly.

While his brother was wrestling with the car, Jeff checked up.

“I was in self-survival,” Burton said of avoiding an impromptu automotive family reunion. “You don’t have much time to think about ‘it’s my brother’ or anything like that.

“Once I got by him, I checked in my mirror to see if he had hit hard. He hadn’t.”

Just hard enough to finish his day, and to make his brother stand on the brakes. Kenseth merely drove under the Burton family on the 22-degree bank and into the lead. He had the tires to stay there, thanks to a fortuitous decision by his pit crew.

Kenseth went to his pit with 25 laps to go and opted to change all four tires and remove a right-rear spring rubber to change the handling on his Visine Chevrolet while others figured two tires were enough. They wanted to retain track position, and Kenseth figured with more traction, he could make that up.

“It was a no-brainer,” he said. “We felt like we had to do something . . . We were junk before that, really. We were so loose I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t hang on.

“We put four stickers [new tires] on it and we figured we’d have a shot.”

Jeff Green was third in a Chevrolet, again earning the designation of top-finishing Busch Grand National regular. The Burton brothers and Kenseth are all Winston Cup regulars.

Green leads the Busch series points race but has not won a race.

“We’re top-fiving them to death, but we want to win some races,” he said.

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Winston Cup and Busch Grand National series veteran Johnny Benson gave young Brendan Gaughan a lesson on restarts in winning the Pontiac Wide Track Grand Prix 200, a Winston West event.

NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader gave Gaughan a quick refresher course.

After a caution flag and with only eight laps to run in the 100-lap, 200-mile event, Gaughan’s Chevrolet led the field to the start/finish line, took the green flag, then watched Benson’s Pontiac go through the gears more quickly and shoot past, going into Turn 1.

Gaughan raced to recover and he and Benson raced side by side through two laps before Benson took over and won by 1.029 seconds.

“I don’t know if he missed a shift or what,” said Benson, who will start 10th in today’s NAPA Auto Parts 500 in a Pontiac. “Schrader got side by side with him and that helped me.”

The event actually was stretched to 103 laps because the Winston West series will not end a race under caution, and one came out shortly after Benson took the lead.

The extra laps cost Gaughan, a Winston West regular, another spot, because Schrader’s Pontiac got him on that restart to finish second.

Benson’s victory was worth $19,860.