Marcos Ambrose cruised to his third straight Nationwide Series victory on the 2.45-mile road course of Watkins Glen international circuit, during the Zippo 200. During the latest 16-lap run to the finish, Ambrose pulled away to win by 2.834 seconds over Joey Logano, who, for once, was happy to settle for second place.
"It was a wonderful day for us. We've had our troubles at JTG this year, and we're parting ways at the end of the season, and this is a really fitting way to finish this thing off."
Logano and Harvick, who have had some tense moments between them this season, raced cleanly for the second spot on the final lap, with Logano winning the duel. It was an unexpected good performance for Logano who is not used to drive well at road course circuits. Later he commented:
"I was pretty pumped out about how the car ran today. Road courses and me never got along before. It's cool to see yourself improve every time you get to a place like this. Marcos is pretty good through the Bus Stop -- just watching the line, the curbs he hits, the way he hits 'em, the speed he carries -- I definitely learned a lot," Logano said. "I feel like I picked up the most through there and was able to be pretty good by the end of the race."
Following the top three to the finish were series point leader Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch. Keselowski boosted his point advantage to 327 over second-place Carl Edwards, whose Ford was retired due to engine trouble.
Wild road-course racing in NASCAR series continued early in the race as Jason Leffler sparked a 10-car accident as the tightly bunched field exited turn one on lap 24. Leffler ran off the left side of the course as he rolled out of turn one. His car re-entered the course in heavy traffic, and contact with Colin Braun in the middle of the group created a moment of chaos with many cars been wrecked including Trevor Bayne, Justin Allgaier and Brendan Gaughan.
Leffler admitted that the accident was his fault, but he said Braun should have given him more run to return to the racing surface.
NASCAR put the field under the red flag for 25 minutes to clear the wreckage.
Boris Said, whose winning expectations were high had a bad race finished back in 22nd position.
Jacques Villeneuve whose father Gilles was victorious in the 1979 US Grand Prix at the same circuit, finished 8th dueling with J.R. Fitzpatrick Nelson Piquet Jr. and Steve Wallace. Although he was racing up to 2nd position during pit-stops, he was unlucky as his pitstop was wrecked by a caution flag and the field was shortened. Yet he proved again his competitiveness in a NASCAR stock car.
"It's not where we wanted to be but had a good day. It was still acceptable.
"I think the fact that we had to pit under yellow at the end, that was the main factor because we had to start behind a lot of cars that were slower than us and then I had to use the brakes hard to overtake.
I think that's what created the problems with the brakes and had we been running more in the front like was our position before, we would've just been running our pace and not pushing too hard on the brakes.
However this is good preparation for Montreal, we know more about the car, about the brakes, and it's all good experience."
