Food City 500 Race Report
STEWART-HAAS RACING
Food City 500 Race Report
Date: March 22, 2009
Event: Food City 500 (Round 5 of 36)
Series: NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Location: Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway (.533-mile oval)
Winner: Kyle Busch of Joe Gibbs Racing in a green-white-checkered finish (Toyota)
SHR Finish: Ryan Newman (Started 2nd, Finished 7th / Running, completed 503 of 503 laps)
Tony Stewart (Started 15th, Finished 17th / Running, completed 502 of 503 laps)
Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet Impala SS, led the two-car Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) contingent at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway by finishing a solid seventh in Sunday’s Food City 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.
Before scoring his first top-10 finish of 2009 and his eighth in 15 career Sprint Cup races at Bristol, Newman started a season-best second and took the lead from veteran driver Mark Martin on lap three, whereupon he paced the field for the next 25 laps, brining his laps led total in Sprint Cup to 3,795.
Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet Impala SS for SHR, finished 17th, the first driver one lap down.
Stewart continues to lead the SHR driver lineup in the championship point race, and his 17th-place finish dropped him only one spot to seventh in the standings after round five of 36. Newman gained four spots to climb to 27th in the standings. Stewart is 161 points behind series leader Jeff Gordon and Newman is 319 points out of first.
Kyle Busch won the Food City 500 to score his 14th career victory, his second of the season and his second at Bristol. Interestingly, Bristol is the only track that Busch has ever won at twice.
Finishing .391 of a second behind Busch was his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Denny Hamlin, while three-time and reigning Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, Gordon and Kasey Kahne rounded out the top-five. Pole-winner Martin, Newman, Jeff Burton, Columbia-native Juan Pablo Montoya and Australia-native Marcos Ambrose comprised the remainder of the top-10.
There were nine caution periods for 58 laps, with six drivers failing to finish the 503-lap race, which was extended three laps past its scheduled distance in a green-white-checkered finish.
The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule is the March 29 Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. The race begins at 2 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by FOX beginning with its pre-race show at 1:30 p.m.
