Reutimann wins at Chicagoland

Date published : 11 Jul 2010 - 04:58:55

David Reutimann kept Carl Edwards at bay in the closing laps of Saturday night's race at Chicagoland Speedway, claiming his second NASCAR Sprint Cup series career win.The Michael Waltrip Racing driver emerged as the winning force in the last quarter of the race after spending most of the race running in the top five. Right before the leaders pitted for the last time he was all over Jeff Gordon's rear bumper, trying to find a way past to grab the lead.The Hendrick Motorsports driver was able to keep him behind for a number of laps until he eventually conceded the lead 54 laps from the end. Following his last pitstop Reutimann stretched the gap to Gordon to more than three seconds, but then the Roush Fenway Ford of Edwards started to close on him, cutting his lead in half in a matter of laps.However as the laps faded Edwards' charge started to vanish in the traffic, letting the #00 Toyota cruise its way to victory.Last year Reutimann won for the first time at NASCAR's top-level in a rain-shortened event at Charlotte, partly due to a strategy gamble paying off. This time there was little luck involved in his win, as besides some strong cars encountering problems, there was nobody able to match his pace consistently in the last two stints of the race."No rain tonight, we earned this one and nobody gave it to us. That feels really good," said an excited Reutimann. "I've heard so much stuff for winning a rain-shortened event that everybody said we didn't earn it. Tonight I don't know what they could say about this one."Edwards was happy to claim his best result in more than a year by taking second place, showing signs of recovery for his outfit, which has yet to win a Cup event this season. His team-mate Greg Biffle was enjoying a good run but retired late in the race with a broken engine, while the other two Roush cars were 12th and 13th."We are definitely on the horizon," said Edwards. "We haven't quite gone over, but I know we can run that well because we have done it and we did it tonight. We just have to figure out how to do it every week. I hope this is something we can go back on Monday and talk about, why our car was so much different this week than it has been."Jimmie Johnson was probably the only one who could have prevented Reutimann from taking victory but the reigning champion hit trouble after leading for the first 92 laps. He first misjudged his speed entering the pits for his second stop under green, getting sideways while braking and being forced to abort his run into pitlane and complete another lap. Then as he was making his way back up front he spun exiting Turn 2 after a restart and despite staying on the lead lap he struggled from then on. A later scrape with the wall and issues with the right-front tyre forced him to pit under green and drop two laps down to the leader.Gordon, who was celebrating his 600th consecutive start in the Sprint Cup series, looked like taking his first win of the year until Reutimann's late charge.Instead he ended up third, ahead of Richard Childress's Clint Bowyer and Earnhardt Ganassi's Jamie McMurray, who led for 72 laps until losing his momentum and seeing Gordon get past him with about 100 laps remaining."At times it looked like our car was the one to beat," said Gordon. "But I think David was really, really strong and we got the lead that one time and when he ran us down I knew we were in a little bit of trouble. We made some adjustments on that last pitstop and unfortunately they didn't go the right way for us."Points leader Kevin Harvick struggled with balance and then with a fuel pump issue that sent him to the garage for lengthy repairs. He was classified 34th in the end, 16 laps down, but maintained his lead in the points, trailed by Gordon and Johnson.Pos Driver Car Laps 1. David Reutimann Toyota 267 2. Carl Edwards Ford 267 3. Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 267 4. Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 267 5. Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 267 6. Kasey Kahne Ford 267 7. Jeff Burton Chevrolet 267 8. Denny Hamlin Toyota 267 9. Tony Stewart Chevrolet 26710. Paul Menard Ford 26711. Martin Truex Jr Toyota 26712. David Ragan Ford 26713. Matt Kenseth Ford 26714. A.J. Allmendinger Ford 26715. Mark Martin Chevrolet 26716. Juan Montoya Chevrolet 26717. Kyle Busch Toyota 26718. Brad Keselowski Dodge 26719. Joey Logano Toyota 26720. Regan Smith Chevrolet 26721. Elliott Sadler Ford 26722. Ryan Newman Chevrolet 26723. Dale Earnhardt Jr Chevrolet 26724. Sam Hornish Jr Dodge 26725. Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 26726. Kurt Busch Dodge 26527. Reed Sorenson Toyota 26528. Marcos Ambrose Toyota 26529. Bobby Labonte Chevrolet 26530. Scott Speed Toyota 26431. Travis Kvapil Ford 26132. David Gilliland Ford 26133. Kevin Conway Ford 25634. Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 25135. Greg Biffle Ford 22536. David Stremme Ford 18437. Bill Elliott Ford 17638. Robby Gordon Toyota 17439. Landon Cassill Chevrolet 7340. Casey Mears Chevrolet 4941. Mike Bliss Toyota 4042. Max Papis Toyota 4043. Joe Nemechek Toyota 20