Sprint Cup Series – Lifelock 400 6/16/09

Out of gas but not out of luck! Mark Martin wins one on fuel mileage.

“You know, everybody knows that we have had some horrendous luck this year, and it’s put us pretty far back,” Martin said. “We are on the outside looking in to the Chase. We had a great racecar, but for me, I always, always come up short on the gas mileage thing. I always have. If you look at the stats, you know, I’ve lost 25 and won two probably on it. You know, I just don’t have the luck for it.”

Jimmie Johnson was the one to beat. He dominated the race – leading 146 of 200 laps. Greg Biffle led 42 laps; ran 2nd to Johnson much of the day and was the only other driver to lead laps in the double digits.

Johnson ran out of gas with 2 to go. Biffle’s tank ran dry on the final lap. Martin was running 3rd and able to capitalize, although he too, ran out of gas. “After the race was over, I shut it off at the start/finish line, coasted all the way around. I was gonna try to fire it up just to get it in Victory Lane. It wouldn’t even spin over. So it ran exactly as far as it was gonna run. We had our hands full if we were going to try to go another lap or another mile. That was cool!”

Johnson wound up 22nd. Biffle finished 5th. Both Biffle and Johnson agreed during their post-race interviews, the outcome would (probably) have been a different had they not challenged each other so hard for the lead with 6 laps to go.

“On the bright side of things, I’m really happy with the performance we had here,” Johnson said. “We’ll take our lumps and go to the next one.”

Jeff Gordon finished 2nd followed by Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards.

For the unofficial race results, click here.

There were just 3 cautions for 14 laps. There were 11 lead changes among 6 drivers:

Kyle Busch 1-8; J. Johnson 9-73; Kyle Busch 74; J. Johnson 75-117; C. Edwards 118; J. Johnson 119-152; D. Hamlin 153; G. Biffle 154-194; J. Johnson 195-198; G. Biffle 199; M. Martin 200