Coming full circle

It was a day that, for all intents and purposes, belonged to Joe Gibbs Racing.

In the first race with that weird new thing sitting on the back of the car, the team’s trio of Chevrolet Impalas led a mind-boggling 443 of the 500 trips around Bristol Motor Speedway. Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin accounted for the bulk of those, leading 257 and 177 laps, respectively, but even the flagship #18 car, star-crossedin recent seasons, led nine laps with JJ Yeley at the wheel.

Stewart dominated the first 280 laps and was in front of the field a fuel cable broke under caution, starving his orange #20 of Sunoco gasoline and robbing the two-time Cup champion of what seemed certain to be a most dominant victory.

From there, Hamlin took charge, dueling back and forth with Kyle Busch’s Hendrick Motorsportsentry, and seemed to have the race in hand when a shuffle to avoid Jimmie Johnson, stricken with a flat tire, allowed Busch to take the lead.

Hamlin sat second on a restart soon thereafter, seeming primed to dispatch of Busch and give Coach Gibbs the trip to victory lane he rightfully deserved that afternoon.

Alas, Hamlin’s Chevrolet suffered a fuel-pickup issue of its own, andwhen the checkered flag waved over the first race with the rear wing, part of NASCAR’s new “Car of Tomorrow,” he was scored 14th. Stewart was a miserable 35th, and Yeley took 36th. Kyle Busch won for Hendrick, and Jeff Burton, of Richard ChildressRacing, finished second. Busch’s Hendrick teammate, Jeff Gordon, was third.

All Joe Gibbs had to show for having easilythe two fastest cars in the state of Tennessee was the distinction of being the first of many car owners that season to dominate a race, see their chances go away anda Hendrick car slip through into victory lane, and have to read all the stories about “Hendrick domination” without strangling the closest writer they could find.

On Monday, everything came full circle, with four of the key players in Bristol taking on a starring role.

In the first race with that new, yet old, thing sitting on the back of the car, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Toyota Camrys led 172 laps, all courtesy of Hamlin, the only remaining driver from Gibbs’s roster that day in Bristol. His teammates, Busch and Joey Logano, each spent most of the race in the top-10, with Busch hovering amongst the top five.

When Burton’s right front tire finally began to let go after lap after lap of hounding Hamlin, Busch slipped into second place. After Burton drew a caution flag with ten laps to go when the fire finally went flat, sending him into the wall and derailing his hopes of salvaging a good finish, Hamlin seemed set for one last restart before a run for the roses that no one was going to stop.

All of that appeared changed, thrown out the window, when Hamlin’s crew chief, Mike Ford, called him down pit road. Busch’s pit boss, Dave Rogers, did likewise. No crew chief of the other drivers sitting amongst the top nine made the same call, and Busch and Hamlin returned to the track eighth and ninth, with just four laps to go on the final restart.

The leader: Hendrick’s Jeff Gordon.

Driving like a man possessed, like a man who simply would not be denied in his final race before critical surgery on his left knee, Hamlin made a daring three-wide move entering turn one, then picked off one car after another, finally pulling into fourth place on lap 499.

His charge appeared for naught as Gordon rounded turn four and headed for the white flag. But just before Gordon’s Chevrolet reached the start-finish line and eliminated the possibility of a green-white-checkered finish, Busch was bumped into a crash, giving Hamlin the restart he needed to make one last grasp at the win.

In the frenzied first lap of the two-lap overtime, Hamlin watched as Gordon was bumped by Matt Kenseth, then as Gordon bumped Kenseth back in turn three, leaving prime real estate on the inside of the corner for Hamlin to place his black Toyota.

Following him through into second was Logano.

A lap later, when the checkered flag waved over the first race of the return of the rear spoiler, Joe Gibbs Racing’s #11 and #20 cars were in first and second, just as they should have been in Bristol. The team’s third car, driven by the man who had won the race snatched from them by mechanical maladies, was 22nd. Gordon again finished third, and Burton placed 20th.

Three years and one week after the Bristol disaster, Gibbs and the FedEx and Home Depot teams got their revenge.

In a sport based on driving in circles, its funny how things can come full circle.