A fantastic finish in a fuel-mileage race? Believe it
Fuel-mileage races have a bad reputation, and often deservedly so. The very words are associated with lackluster events with long green-flag runs, capped by undeserving winners who didn’t have the best car celebrating in victory lane.
Blah.
So when the LifeLock 400 at Michigan appeared to have all the makings of another snoozefest all the way through, here comes some real excitement.
Jimmie Johnson is leading the race and runs out of fuel coming to the white flag.
Whoa.
Greg Biffle takes over the lead and runs out of fuel on the backstretch of the final lap.
Whoa!
Mark Martin drives past Biffle and runs out of fuel in Turn Four, but has enough speed to coast across the finish line 3 seconds ahead of runnerup Jeff Gordon.
WHOA!!!
Yes, it was a fuel-mileage race. And yes, it wasn’t very exciting until the very end.
But it’s hard to fault a race with a finish that exciting.
“Typically when you think ‘fuel-mileage race,’ you think ‘boring,’” Gordon said. “This wasn’t boring. It made for great entertainment, and that’s what we’re really here for.”
The finish probably made the trip out to the Irish Hills all worth it for the fans who showed up on a sunny, pleasant Michigan day (and though there weren’t as many fans as normal, there were still plenty to be found).
Praising fuel-mileage races can be difficult at times, especially when they produce a fluke winner like the weather-shortened events that turn gambles into trophies. Race fans have seen it before: Everyone pits, and a couple of drivers try to stay out and milk their gas to the finish, driving half-throttle and generally turning the race into a stinker.
They can be Hail Mary passes that just happen to result in a win. This one wasn’t.
Everyone was in the same situation: Trying to save enough fuel to make it to the end. No one planned to pit.
That made this a fuel-mileage race that was firmly in the hands (and feet) of the drivers – not the kind where the guy with the 10-second lead slows down to nurse his dying fuel supply.
“When we’re all short – and I’m pretty sure everyone was short – it puts it in the driver’s hands versus how much do you want to push it,” third-place finisher Denny Hamlin said. “It’s still a drivers’ race, even though it’s a fuel-mileage race.”
In this case, the drama provided by near-empty fuel tanks actually salvaged the day – for the second week in a row. NASCAR Chairman Brian France told reporters just a couple of hours before the race that NASCAR’s new car model was “putting on great racing;” many fans probably wondered what the heck he was talking about through the first three-quarters of the LifeLock 400.
Lengthy green-flag runs sometimes leave fans begging for the “phantom” debris cautions they often scorn. And there were some truly long ones at Michigan. One fan even suggested someone throw grand marshal Kid Rock onto the track to cause a yellow.
Cautions are more popular than ever these days, given the tremendous entertainment value provided by the new double-file restart rule. But there weren’t even enough restarts (only three cautions) to make the race very fun until it became clear that the race would be decided by fuel mileage.
And the people of Michigan, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and an economy wrecked by the crumbling auto industry, needed to have fun for a day.
In the end, they got it.
“Usually [fuel-mileage races] are not very exciting and don’t wind up making a good show,” Martin said. “I think the fans really got a good show here. You had two guys wrestling for the win, and then you got a surprise winner coming out of it.”
Fortunately for both Martin and the race fans, this pleasant day at Michigan was a pleasant surprise.
