Matt Kenseth Claims NASCAR Win At Food City 500

The Food City 500 race of NASCAR ended with Matt Kenseth bringing home the championship, which is his first Sprint Cup win since 2013. Rain, wrecks and cautions caused numerous delays to the race, which at one point was delayed for four hours. While Kenseth was in the lead for just forty-seven laps at Bristol Motor Speedway, he was able to finish first in the race.

Rain delayed the start of the Food City 500 by ninety minutes, and after twenty-two laps, it was delayed again due to rain. The second delay lasted for four hours. The race was stopped again following lap 273 due to rain. A wreck later caused some changes in the race dynamics as race leader, Kevin Harvick, was knocked out after Jeb Burton and Jimmie Johnson made contact following the restart. This was the first race of the season with Harvick out of the list of top ten finishers. Aside from Harvick, David Ragan was also knocked out of contention.

Johnson was able to recover from the wreck and placed second to Kenseth. The top five finishers included Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon. The car of Brad Keselowski also incurred considerable damage following a wreck, along with the car of Joey Logano, a teammate of Keselowski.

Food City 500 Won By Matt Kenseth - image credit: al.com

Kurt Busch and Carl Edwards were in the race around eight laps from the scheduled end of the race before a wreck knocked both of them out of contention. Denny Hamlin complained of neck and upper back pains on lap 12 prior to the rain delay in lap 22. He did not finish the race.

Even with the mishaps and sloppy conditions, NASCAR wanted to finish the Food City 500 race. Keselowski revealed after the race that while he does not racing in the rain, he understood the position of NASCAR. He added that the officials wanted to finish the race and it was a day when it will keep on raining even as everyone was trying to finish as many laps as they can while giving the best race possible to the fans.

Kenseth became the first pole-sitter to finish first in Bristol since 2008 as he snapped a losing streak at NASCAR lasting for fifty-one races.

Posted by Andre Monohan on Monday April 20 2015, 11:28 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0