Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins rain-shortened Cup race

Today’s Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at Phoenix global Speedway is the last of the 10-race eliminator series and will set the field for next week’s season finale to determine a champion at Homestead, Fla.

It started with Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. clinging to the four spots to vie for the championship next week at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

There are no bonus points based on overall laps led or leading the most laps in the final race. Kurt Busch was able to get by on the outside for the lead at the end of lap 1, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was third behind Johnson, Kyle Larson was fourth, Carl Edwards fifth.

“If I had four or six inches at Talladega, we would be going there to Homestead to race for a championship, too”, said Earnhardt, whose championship hopes where shattered at Talladega when the yellow came out just before he passed Logano for the lead on the only green-white-checkered restart. Their time will come and they will succeed in the moment. They were the cutest things and we had a lot of fun with them. It’s a rain-shortened win, but my guys are very proud of it because of how the auto ran all weekend and we put ourselves in this position. It also was Jones’ second straight week of NASCAR triple duty.

When the cycle of stops completed, Harvick was back up front with Logano in second.

“Bring NASCAR anywhere and you’ll catch up on your rain”, defending season champ Harvick said. “We just had a couple bad races at the wrong time and this is what it is”.

If the design of the Chase, featuring points reset and driver eliminations every three races, is to elicit drama, then it’s undoubtedly been a success. Kurt Busch was up to 29th. Jeff Gordon, who is retiring after this season, is in first place.

“I’ve got none”, Kyle Busch said.

A rain delay that lasted almost seven hours included numerous trips back and forth from the garage added to the pressure of the race and the Chase.

Driving for single-car Furniture Row Racing, Truex goes to Homestead with confidence.

“With the way our stuff has been running here lately, it’s been really good, and we were really strong at Texas (last week)”, he said. “If we win this weekend, it’s the biggest win of the year up to this point”. He knows he needs to win Phoenix to make it to Homestead.

NASCAR waived its requirement that a driver compete in all races to be title eligible, though, and Busch won four times and quickly climbed up the standings to reach the final hurdle – ranking 30th or better – by early August.

The lead for Harvick was up to 2.6 seconds by lap 82; Kurt Busch was looking for 13th from Brad Keselowski, Johnson was up to 16th.