Fuel-mileage gambles backfire at Pocono

When it comes to NASCAR racing at any of the three national series, discussion of fuel mileage makes most people who don’t have an engineering background cringe.
They’ll cry that watching the cars go around a race track for an extended period of time gets boring after awhile, or “it’s just cars turning left and going around in circles all day.”
Those who saw the Windows 10 400 on Sunday afternoon at Pocono Raceway and believe in the power of logical thinking got a tension-filled finish as the race leaders tried to travel the final 92.5 miles (37 laps on the 2.5-mile triangle track) on a single tank of gas.
Something that should be noted here: a typical tank in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car holds around 18.5 gallons of fuel and averages around 4.5 miles per gallon.
Joey Logano tried to make it. His tank on the No. 22 Ford ran dry with three laps left.
So that opened the door for Kyle Busch, who was only going for his fourth win in a row. He fell a very long straightaway short of the finish line before his fuel cell expired.
Martin Truex Jr. was going for the season sweep of the Pocono races. He never got to the front as his tank burned the last drops of gas before the white-flag lap.
Matt Kenseth, who had never won at Pocono before, let alone in a fuel-mileage fight to the finish, captured the best of both worlds and picked up his second victory of the season.
In the big picture that is the final run to the Chase, Busch’s fuel-mileage gamble didn’t put him into the top 30 in points, but it didn’t push him two steps backward, either. With only five more races to run before the Chase field gets locked down, Busch actually gained some ground, but still needs 13 more points to meet the last condition and get into the run for the title.
In the final finishing order, Truex Jr. was 19th, Logano 20th and Busch 21st. From racing for the win, that’s how badly any gamble on fuel mileage can hurt.
For those who were a little more prudent on fuel – the final 63 laps were run under green – the rewards were great. In addition to Kenseth, who finished a comfortable nine seconds ahead of Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Greg Biffle completed one of the more unlikely top-5 runs they’ve had in a long while.
Biffle sat 14th in the running order with 10 laps to go, Gordon was 16th and Dale Jr. was 17th. For Biffle, it was just his second top-5 run of the entire year and first since a runner-up to Carl Edwards at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May.
That’s how fast things can change. One driver’s heartbreak is another one’s nirvana, or so the saying goes.
For Kyle Busch, though, Sunday’s disappointment is only a minor bump in the road. As the series hits the road course at Watkins Glen next weekend, Busch already has two wins there (2008, 2013) and an average finish of 11.3 in 10 career starts.
He’s also the last driver to sweep the road course races (Sonoma), having done the double in 2008.
As the final five races to the Chase unfold, keep your eyes open the rest of the way. You just never know where the next roll of the automotive dice will lead.

-Among the cooler developments of the race weekend, Saturday's XFINITY Series race was nothing short of awesome, especially for how the win unfolded.

Ryan Blaney should have won last week at Indianapolis, but made one measly mistake that was just enough for Kyle Busch to slide by him on the final lap and get the victory. With Busch and the rest of the Cup regulars staying away, Blaney didn't have it easy in the stretch run at Rusty Wallace's 7/8-mile oval.

The 22 had to survive four restarts over the final 24 laps, but Blaney held off a charging Brendan Gaughan early and Regan Smith late to earn his first win of 2015. Blaney led 252 laps -- two more than the original advertised race distance -- and it was just barely good enough.

Let that effort be a lesson to all of us. If you make mistakes, you get back up, dust yourself off, and come back better than you were before.
One other note to update everyone on, since the Utah papers did not do so: Michael Self, who makes his home in Park City, made his XFINITY debut at Iowa on Saturday night. After qualifying 19th, he was running really well and staying on the lead lap in the 01 for Nebraska Transport Company in a Chevrolet, but made contact with the wall at lap 145 and ended up 32nd.

Tom Zulewski has covered multiple forms of auto racing in his 18 years as a sports journalist. Readers from wherever they are in the world can join the merry band of Twitter followers @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Watkins Glen International (2.45-mile road course), Watkins Glen, N.Y.

SPRINT CUP: Cheez-It 355 at the Glen, Sunday, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 355 kilometers (220.5 miles), 90 laps

2014 champion: A.J. Allmendinger

XFINITY SERIES: Zippo 200 at the Glen, Saturday, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 200.9 miles, 82 laps.

2014 champion: Marcos Ambrose.

CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Off until Aug. 15 for the Careers for Veterans 200 Presented By Cooper Standard and Brad Keselowski's Checkered Flag Foundation at Michigan International Speedway.