Kenseth gives JGR 1 more win before NASCAR’s playoffs begin

“Certainly right now as a company we’re on a roll”, said Kenseth, who led 352 of the 400 laps. Jamie McMurray clinched his berth as soon as he took the green flag, but Jeff Gordon, Ryan Newman, Paul Menard and Clint Bowyer all had to protect their positions. Dale Earnhardt Jr., 2,006; 7. Saturday night, Jeffrey Earnhardt made his Sprint Cup debut at Richmond.

The team has won eight of the last 11 Sprint Cup races.

“It’s more of an inconvenience and uncomfortable thing as opposed to pain”, he said. “It is so easy for things to go wrong and you are just trying to focus on doing everything right. “(The team) really dug deep and worked hard. The way that he came back, and the attitude, the fortitude he had to have to stick with it, showed us a different side of him that nobody wants to see, but I think we didn’t know that Kyle had it. … “So we’re going to try and balance that out, and I think we are very capable of doing that”. He ended up being lapped and looked like the rest of the traffic at Richmond for once this season. He now has four wins, tied with Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson for most heading into the Chase. Can anyone stop Joe Gibbs? “I drove my heart out tonight”. I saw some beating and banging there.

“I’m relieved”, McMurray said after his 13th-place finish. “I$3 had to work for it a little on the short run”. “And when the drivers are compatible, it elevates all of us”. He joined the 11 drivers already locked into the Chase by virtue of wins in the first 25 races leading up to the Richmond regular-season finale.

Almirola posted his best finish of the year, but it wasn’t enough.

“Obviously everybody knows all the news and the stories, but to be able to battle through that, I owe everybody in the organization a great deal of thanks for keeping their head down, to keep digging and get ourselves into the Chase”, he said.

When I came in danger of one of their their best tracks you know in the last couple years it’s just been one of our worst.

“I’m disappointed to come up a few spots short, but we gave it all we had, and that is all we can do”.

Carl Edwards: After winning his second race of the season in the Southern 500 at Darlington last weekend, Edwards silenced doubters that his fuel-mileage win at Charlotte was a fluke (including myself).

Notes: Roush Fenway Racing failed to place a auto in the Chase for the first time in the organization’s history…. A year after he narrowly missed advancing to the final round of the Chase, hes winless and in danger of not being eligible to run for the fifth title thats eluded him the last 14 years. He made it to fourth, but had nothing for the Gibbs cars. By the lap 98 caution, though, Hamlin was inside the top five.

Lead Changes: 13 among 4 drivers. He started 31, charged to the top five by the 165 lap of the 400-lap race, but took a late penalty for speeding on pit road.

Teammate Kyle Busch was second, while polesitter Joey Logano had to fight back for third after a strategy miscue just after quarter-distance.

Sixth through 10 were Hamlin, Gordon, Keselowski, Johnson and Bowyer.