With no raining asterisk, David Reutimann won the second Sprint Cup race of his career in the LifeLock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Reutimann outdueled Gordon in an entertaining side-by-side race for the lead with 54 laps left in the race and crossed the finish line .727 seconds ahead of Carl Edwards, who posted his best finish -- and only second top five -- of the season. easily to cross the finish line first.Reutimann, who is in a contract year at Michael Waltrip Racing, recently reached a handshake agreement on a three-year extension with the team.
Reutimann said in Victory Lane
"[Saturday night] we earned it, and it's a total team effort. "Everyone at Michael Waltrip Racing did a phenomenal job. I don't even know what to say. You think about these moments all your life, and you think about all the right things to say.
I'm about to cry -- this is awesome.
MWR general manager Ty Norris said:
I've probably not seen anyone have to walk around for a year-and-a-half and apologize about winning a race. These guys proved [Saturday night] that they deserve a contract.
They deserve to be around."
Jeff Gordon who was feeling comfortable leading 47 laps late in the race had almost secured the victory before Reutiman started threatening his domination and finish finally 3rd.
It was the 600th career start for Gordon, who joked that he's beginning to feel a little old.
"I do when I get out of that race car and everything aches. It didn't used to be like that."
Clint Bowyer came home 4rth, followed by pole-sitter Jamie McMurray. Kasey Kahne, Jeff Burton, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart and Paul Menard completed the top 10.
As Reutimann hunted Gordon down for the lead, his team came on the radio and encouraged him to wait for Gordon to make a mistake.But Reutimann joked:
"Are you kidding?. He's Jeff Gordon. When's he going to make a mistake?"
But Gordon did develop handling problems, allowing Reutimann to take the lead on Lap 213. He moved in front again after a cycle of pit stops.
After the final round of green-flag stops, Edwards was gaining on Reutimann at the end of the race but ran out of time.
"Second is bittersweet. You want to win, but we're obviously very happy with the result. If we run that well every week, we'll win plenty of races. The key is that we ran so well. If we can continue that every week we will be in good shape.
Three more laps and we would have been right there, but you never really know, I guess, because it depends on how hard he is running, too. But I feel like with three more laps, things would have gotten really interesting."
What was an excellent night for Reutimann, Edwards and even Gordon was a disaster for Cup points leader Kevin Harvick and four-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson.
Harvick fought trouble all race long, at one point bringing his No. 29 Chevrolet to the garage to change the fuel pump and fuel pump cable. He lost 16 laps in the process and finished 34th, 16 laps down.
Johnson may have had the fastest car -- having led the first 92 laps -- but he hurt his own cause twice before the race was 150 laps old. On the way to a green-flag stop on Lap 93, Johnson missed the entrance to pit road, lost the lead to McMurray and spent the next 40 laps running down the driver of the No. 1 Chevy.
Less than two laps after a restart on Lap 136, Johnson spun on the backstretch while running in close quarters with the No. 56 Toyota of Martin Truex Jr. It was impossible to tell, even after multiple replays, whether Truex's car made slight contact with Johnson's Chevy or whether Truex simply took the air off Johnson's spoiler and caused him to lose control.
Whatever the case, Johnson restarted 24th on Lap 141, and matters got worse after showing his love for ChicagoLand wall. On Lap 169 Johnson radioed: "Right-front flat -- I scrubbed the wall a little bit," and brought his car to pit road for four new tires. He came out of the pits two laps down and ultimately finished 25th, one lap down.
