Tony Stewart broke a winless run to take the Sprint Cup race at Atlanta, after Denny Hamlin's pole-sitting race ended with an engine failure.
Tony Stewart won the 2010 Emory Healthcare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on 5 September 2010, his first win of the season. Carl Edwards was second and Jimmie Johnson third, after pole-sitter Denny Hamlin retired with an engine failure. It was Stewart's thirty-eighth career win.
The 2010 Emory Healthcare 500 was a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race held on 5 September 2010 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia. Tony Stewart won it for Stewart-Haas Racing, ending a long winless run, with Carl Edwards second and Jimmie Johnson third. Pole-sitter Denny Hamlin led early but retired with an engine failure, and the race finished with twenty-seven lead changes among nine drivers.
Why did the Emory Healthcare 500 matter in the 2010 season?
The race was the twenty-fifth of the 2010 Sprint Cup season, and it came with the Chase for the Sprint Cup still ahead. Stewart had gone thirty-one races without a win, and his victory was his first of the season and the thirty-eighth of his career. It moved him up two spots to fourth in the Drivers' Championship, and it was his third victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The win was a relief for a team that had been searching for one.
The win also carried a title-race effect. Stewart finished 283 points behind the leader, Kevin Harvick, and fourteen points ahead of Carl Edwards. With eleven races left in the season, the gap was a meaningful one.
A pole-sitter's engine failure opened the door, and Tony Stewart walked through it to end a long winless run.
Who led the points before the race?
Harvick entered Atlanta with 3,521 points at the top of the Drivers' Championship. Jeff Gordon was second on 3,242 points, Kyle Busch third on 3,170, Carl Edwards fourth on 3,113 and Denny Hamlin fifth on 3,108.
In the Manufacturers' Championship, Chevrolet led with 173 points, twenty-seven points ahead of Toyota. Ford, on 110 points, was eleven points clear of Dodge in the battle for third. Kasey Kahne was the defending race winner.
What was the track like at Atlanta?
Atlanta Motor Speedway is one of ten intermediate tracks on the NASCAR calendar. The standard layout is a four-turn quad-oval that measures 1.54 miles (2.48 km). Its turns are banked at twenty-four degrees, while the front stretch, which holds the finish line, and the back stretch are banked at five degrees.
The race was run in the early evening, with the temperature at 85 F (29 C) before the start.
How did practice and qualifying set up the race?
Two practice sessions were held on Saturday before the race. The first ran for 120 minutes, and Kasey Kahne was quickest, ahead of Kurt Busch and Clint Bowyer. The final session lasted 45 minutes, and Ryan Newman was fastest, with Carl Edwards and Juan Pablo Montoya behind him.
Forty-seven cars were entered for qualifying, but only forty-three could start. Denny Hamlin took his eighth career pole with a lap of 29.587 seconds. Newman joined him on the front row, Kyle Busch qualified third, Edwards fourth and Tony Stewart fifth. Jason Leffler, Landon Cassill, Scott Riggs and Todd Bodine failed to qualify.
Hamlin was candid afterwards about the season. He said the team had been up and down over the previous ten races, and that the regular season had become less important once they were certain to make the Chase. He said the team would treat the next two weeks as if they were Chase races.
How did the race start?
The race began at 7:30 p.m. EDT and was televised live on ESPN. Joe Gibbs gave the invocation, Ernie Haase and Signature Sound performed the anthem, and Terry Green, Emory Healthcare's 500th heart transplant recipient, gave the command for the drivers to start their engines.
Hamlin kept the lead into the first corner with Newman in second. Newman challenged him on the opening lap and then took over the lead for a time. Kyle Busch was passed by Carl Edwards two laps after the start, and Mark Martin, who began seventeenth, had dropped to twenty-seventh by the sixth lap. Busch took back third one lap later.
After eight laps Hamlin had built a lead of eight tenths of a second, while Jimmie Johnson had moved up to fifth. Martin then fell to thirtieth because of handling problems.
What happened at the first green-flag pit stops?
Green-flag pit stops began on lap 44, when Sam Hornish Jr. drove to pit road. Hamlin and Kyle Busch, who were first and second, pitted about five laps later. Kyle Busch then had to serve a drive-through penalty for speeding on pit road.
Stewart became the leader after the stops. Hamlin passed him to regain the lead on lap 55. Kahne then passed Truex for fourth on lap 62, and Stewart passed Hamlin two laps later to move into the lead again. Kyle Busch pitted on lap 70 with a loose wheel, and Edwards passed Kahne for third on lap 80.
Stewart and Hamlin then traded the lead through the middle of the race. Hamlin passed Stewart on lap 88, and Stewart reclaimed the lead three laps later. Stewart then led three laps before handing the lead back to Hamlin for one lap, and the pit stops continued.
Why did Denny Hamlin's race end early?
Hamlin reclaimed the lead on lap 127, when debris in turn four brought out a caution. He led on the restart, but three laps later he had dropped to fifth and Edwards was in front. Hamlin's engine then failed on lap 128, and he went to the garage. He finished forty-third.
The restart that followed produced a crash. Biffle spun sideways after the restart and collided with Elliott Sadler, which brought out a third caution. Both cars suffered heavy damage and went to the garage. Biffle returned later, seventy-one laps down, and lost power after four laps.
Stewart regained the lead after the pit stops, and Johnson then passed him on the restart. Kyle Busch, who was a lap down after his penalty, had recovered to sixth, and Gordon moved into sixth after passing him.
How did Denny Hamlin's race look before the failure?
Hamlin led the most laps in the first half of the race, and he and Stewart traded the lead several times as the pit stops came and went. His engine problem ended a race in which he had been one of the main contenders.
Afterwards Hamlin said that reliability was the real issue for the team. He felt that if they could keep the car together for the next 10 weeks, the odds of winning the championship would be pretty good.
How did the lead change in the final stages?
Stewart passed Johnson for the lead on lap 170. Kurt Busch had struggled with his handling in the first half and climbed from thirty-second to sixteenth by lap 171. Jamie McMurray then suffered a flat tyre and fell to twenty-sixth.
A fourth caution came when David Ragan spun on the backstretch, and Stewart kept the lead on the restart as the drivers raced three wide. Johnson took second from Edwards on lap 207, and Montoya passed Kyle Busch for fourth. Stewart led seventy-five laps in total, the most of anyone in the race.
Edwards then passed Stewart for the lead, and a fifth caution followed when debris from a tyre flat on Harvick's car was spread across the track. On the restart Scott Speed's engine failure brought out a sixth caution, and the lead changed hands several more times before the closing stage.
The finish was decided by several more cautions. Brad Keselowski hit the outside wall, Kahne's tyre deflated on lap 302, and in the closing laps Newman and Kahne made contact. Stewart crossed the line first, and Edwards finished second, more than a second behind.
What were the top finishing positions?
| Position | Driver | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tony Stewart | First win of 2010, thirty-eighth career win, led seventy-five laps |
| 2 | Carl Edwards | Led the race after Hamlin's failure; second at the finish |
| 3 | Jimmie Johnson | Started seventh, kept third in the closing laps |
| 4 | Jeff Burton | Fourth at the finish |
| 5 | Kyle Busch | Fifth after a penalty early in the race |
| Forty-third | Denny Hamlin | Pole-sitter; engine failure on lap 128 |
What did the result mean for the points?
Stewart finished 283 points behind Harvick, who still led the Drivers' Championship with 3,585 points after the race. Gordon finished thirteenth, but he was second on 3,366 points, forty-one points ahead of Kyle Busch and sixty-four ahead of Stewart. The race kept Stewart in the Chase conversation and moved him up two places in the standings.
In the Manufacturers' Championship Chevrolet kept its lead with 182 points, while Toyota had 150 and Ford 116, fourteen points ahead of Dodge in fourth. Chevrolet was thirty-two points ahead of Toyota with eleven races left.
What did the drivers say after the race?
Stewart said his team had struggled on restarts all night, but that the last two restarts went better once he got on the throttle closer and kept the car from spinning as badly. He credited the pit crew for a stop that regained the track position he had lost on an earlier restart, and he said the car had been balanced from the start.
Stewart also said that when a car is that quick, losing spots on a restart is painful, but that he did not feel in serious trouble after giving up a couple of places. He said he had rarely been happier to win, and that the duel with Hamlin, in which the two traded places several times, had been fun.
Hamlin said the engine failure was frustrating, because if the team could keep the car together it had a good chance of winning the championship. Newman explained his contact with Kahne by saying that Kyle Busch hit him at almost the same moment, and that he had been trying to help Kahne past Kurt Busch when the contact happened. He said that kind of contact had happened several times that season and occasionally caused accidents, and he felt Kahne's damage had been greater than his own.
How was the race covered and attended?
A total of 93,200 people attended the race, and 5.516 million watched it on television. ESPN carried the broadcast live from the start. The race took three hours, fifty-two minutes and forty-three seconds, and Stewart won by 1.316 seconds over Edwards.
