Hamlin has compression fracture in lower back

By JENNA FRYER (AP Auto Racing Writer) | The Associated Press – 12 hours ago

 

• Rescue workers tend to the wreckage of the No. 11 FedEx Express Toyota driven by Denny Hamlin after he collided with Joey Logano on the final lap of the …
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• From front, Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Timmy Hill, Joey Logano, Paul Menard and others pit during the first caution flag during the NASCAR Sprint Cup …

 

Denny Hamlin suffered a compression fracture in his lower spine during a last-lap crash while racing for the win against former teammate Joey Logano, and Joe Gibbs Racing gave no indication Monday how long its driver could be sidelined.

 

''I just want to go home,'' Hamlin tweeted from a hospital in Southern California. He later posted a photo of himself giving a thumbs-up and appeared to be wearing a back brace.

The team said he had what is called an L1 compression fracture; essentially, the first vertebra in the lumbar section of his spine collapsed.

Hamlin was released from the hospital Monday night, and JGR said he'd return to North Carolina to be evaluated by Dr. Jerry Petty of Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associates. A reporter from USA Today spoke to Hamlin outside the hospital and reported Hamlin, wearing a back brace, walked out on his own.

NASCAR does not race this weekend, but returns to action April 7 at Martinsville Speedway, where Hamlin, who is 10th in the Sprint Cup standings, is a four-time winner.

Hamlin was airlifted from the Fontana track after a collision with Logano sent him nearly head-on into the inside wall in a place where Auto Club Speedway does not have energy-absorbing SAFER barriers. There are barriers on the inside of some of the walls, but portions of the track between Turns 1 and 2 and Turns 3 and 4 are not protected.

Track spokesman David Talley said Monday the SAFER barriers are installed upon NASCAR's recommendation, and track officials will wait to see what, if anything, NASCAR recommends after Hamlin's accident.

''NASCAR is reviewing the incident and any improvements that can be made, will be made,'' Talley said. ''If NASCAR feels that additional SAFER Barriers are needed, then we will absolutely make those enhancements. SAFER barrier recommendations are based on past history and this is a situation we, nor NASCAR has ever seen at this track before.''

IndyCar last year returned to Auto Club Speedway for the first time since 2005 and the season finale is scheduled to be held at the track in October.

But the issue of the SAFER barriers and Hamlin's impact seemed to be overshadowed by the most recent flare-up in this new feud.

Logano managed to finish third despite wrecking into the outside wall after hitting Hamlin, who spun Logano last week at Bristol to spark a bitter post-race confrontation.

Because of the recent bickering between the former teammates, Logano was somewhat defiant after Sunday's accident.

''He probably shouldn't have done what he did last week, so that's what he gets,'' Logano said.

On Monday, Logano's car owner said the driver was unaware of Hamlin's condition when he made the comment during a television interview.

''That's a tough thing, Joey had no idea what the situation was with Denny when he was doing the interview,'' Roger Penske said. ''It's one of those things that came out and taken out of context isn't what he meant. He can't take it back, but people are certainly blowing that up to mean something different than what he knew at the time.''

Tony Stewart also got into a post-race shoving match with Logano, who aggressively blocked Stewart on a late restart. Stewart claimed Logano threw a water bottle at him when he approached, but crews separated the two before it turned into a full fight.

Stewart later railed against the 22-year-old Logano in several interviews and accused him of being ''nothing but a little rich kid that's never had to work in his life.''

Logano was 18 when he broke into NASCAR with Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008 with the nickname ''Sliced Bread.'' He'd risen rapidly through the racing ranks with the financial backing from his father, Tom, who used funds from the family's Connecticut waste management company to help his two children pursue their dreams.

Logano had the means to pursue a racing career, and was in Georgia racing quarter midgets at the age of 6 while his older sister chased a life of competitive ice skating.

But Tom Logano's near-constant presence at the NASCAR races hurt Logano's reputation, and him angrily demanding his son go after Kevin Harvick after a 2010 incident at Pocono only made things worse.

On Monday, Patricia Driscoll, girlfriend of Kurt Busch, referred to Logano as (hash)TrustFundRacer in a series of tweets that accused him of reckless racing with ''no less than 5 drivers.''

''We were lucky that none of the others were hurt by his actions,'' Driscoll tweeted.

An agitated Penske thought the criticism of Logano's upbringing was out of line.

''He's a solid young man and his family has supported him in racing as many families of professional athletes do in every sport,'' Penske said. ''Anyone who looks at that as a criticism, to focus on that is just petty.''

He also said he supported his driver, who signed last year to join the Penske Racing organization as teammate to defending Sprint Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski.

''Listen, Joey is a great driver and what happened at the end there wasn't anything more than hard racing,'' Penske said. ''I stand behind him and I think he's going to go down as one of the greatest drivers to ever race.''

It never developed at JGR, where Logano replaced Stewart in 2009 and was teammates with Busch and Hamlin. Signs of a rift between Hamlin and Logano didn't show publicly until after this year's season-opening Daytona 500, when the two exchanged barbs on Twitter.

Then came an on-track incident at Bristol last week, more exchanges on Twitter, and finally their last-lap battle for the win at Fontana. Although the crash seemed to be a result of hard racing, Logano's lack of empathy immediately after the race gave the impression his contact with Hamlin was intentional.

Hamlin got himself out of the car, but then slumped to the ground beside it before an ambulance arrived. He was eventually airlifted out due to traffic around the track.

The injury is a bit more common in open-wheel racing, which has had three incidents of drivers breaking their backs since 2009.

Will Power broke several vertebrae in his lower back in a 2009 crash during practice at Sonoma and missed that event and the final three races of the season. He couldn't train for two months and wore a back brace for almost four months.

He also suffered a compression fracture of his fourth thoracic vertebra in the 2011 season finale at Las Vegas but missed no racing as he healed during the offseason.

Justin Wilson fractured his fifth thoracic vertebra in 2011 and missed the last six races of the season. Wilson said he was in a back brace for 10 weeks.

Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti fractured the L1 vertebra in his back in a 2003 motorcycle accident. He needed surgery and was out of a race car for almost nine months.

In NASCAR, Sterling Marlin missed the last seven races of the 2002 season with a fractured vertebra in his neck.

 

Ryan Truex to race at Richmond

By David Newton | ESPN.com

 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Ryan Truex will make his Sprint Cup debut for in the April 27 race at Richmond International Raceway for Phoenix Racing.

General manager Steve Barkdoll told ESPN.com the 21-year-old younger brother of Cup driver Martin Truex, Jr. also will drive in the June 2 Cup race at Dover and the July 27 Nationwide Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Truex will be the fourth driver in the No. 51 Chevrolet that is a surprising eight in owner's point when he gets to Richmond. 

 

Regan Smith, who is scheduled for eight to 10 races while driving a fulltime Nationwide schedule for JR Motorsports, was seventh in the Daytona 500. AJ Allmendinger, who will be in the car this weekend at Auto Club Speedway in California, was 11th at Phoenix and 13th this past week at Bristol.

Austin Dillon was 21st at Las Vegas.

Allmendinger was scheduled to drive for James Finch's single-car team based out of Spartanburg, S.C., on April 7 at Martinsville and May 26 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But because of his IndyCar schedule for Penske Racing, he will be replaced in those events by Smith.

Barkdoll said the decision to put Truex in the car at Richmond and Dover was made "because he's got talent and we're trying different things.''

"This year is kind of open to a lot of things,'' said Barkdoll, noting the 51 is unsponsored for Sunday's race. "We think Ryan has some talent. He's done some testing for some other teams and has done well.''

Truex ran the Truck Series opener at Daytona for owner Turner Scott Motorsports and hopes to run more races in that series. He started ninth but crashed and finished 28th. Truex won the K&N Pro Series East in 2009 and 2010, winning five of 21 races.

Hot/Not: Finishing, not starting, has Been Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Achilles heel

By Geoffrey Miller | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 17 hours ago
 

 

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is second in the points standings after four races. (Getty Images)A solid weekend of racing at Bristol has left some guy named Earnhardt looking stout, a return of last year's champion to the top and more questions about what would make fans buy tickets at Bristol in the spring time again. Let's jump in for Hot/Not:

 

HOT: Through four races, the 2013 season has brought a decent – if not splendid – start for NASCAR's most talked about driver. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has two top 5s and four top 10s on his résumé in the fresh season. It's enough, if measured by ranking in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings, to qualify as Earnhardt's most successful season launch.

Earnhardt started 32nd Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway. He finished sixth. Through both attrition of leaders in front of him and by some savvy pit road calls by crew chief Steve Letarte, the finish moved Earnhardt to second in points.

Earnhardt's 2004 season start could rival his 2013 line through four races thanks to a pair of wins he scored at Daytona and Atlanta. But 2013 ranks better in the area of consistency thanks to a finish at Las Vegas in 2004 of 35th. That day, his No. 8 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet was so bad that the team had turned the 400-mile race into a test session by Lap 100. 

This year's strong start, though, isn't what has Earnhardt most pleased. He's instead glad to simply not already be playing the stressful game of Chase for the Sprint Cup catch-up that he watched teammates Kasey Kahne and Jeff Gordon endure throughout last summer. Gordon, thanks to a Daytona crash and a blown tire at Bristol, is already playing that dreaded game again.

"Last year we were able to get a good 10-race start to the season and not have to worry about the points deal," Earnhardt said before Sunday's race. "We were comfortable in the summer and we could worry about our car and think about other things and not be stressed out about our points situation. No matter how good a race team you are, if you get behind, it's a battle all the way to Richmond. And we don't want to be in that situation."

Ultimately, Earnhardt – who qualified for his second consecutive Chase last year – saw any hopes of a title dashed with symptoms from a concussion that kept him from two races late in the season. But even before that, the Chase hadn't gone well for team No. 88. Three races in, Junior was nearly a full race behind eventual champion Brad Keselowski in points after his finishes late in the year weren't sustained relative to the one's early in the year.

Starting hot and finishing cool has been a hallmark of Earnhardt's Sprint Cup career.

Results from his 12 full seasons at NASCAR's highest level show that Earnhardt has typically finished more than three spots higher during the first ten races of a season than he does in the last ten. In fact, it's a progression that has gotten worse since his move to Hendrick Motorsports. At DEI, Earnhardt averaged a finish of 15.5 in the season's first ten events compared to a finish of 16.9 in the season's final ten. Five seasons at Hendrick have shown a stronger start than his DEI days (12.8 average finish) but an even slower finish (19.6).

2012, however, was a marked improvement for Earnhardt in improving both early and late season results. He started off last year at the most impressive clip of his career in the first ten races, averaging a finish of 7.5. The average of the final ten races that Earnhardt competed in was still down to 13.2, but that number marked a fourth-straight year of improvement during that stretch and was light years ahead of his 28.2 average in the final ten races of 2009.

Championships, of course, aren't exclusively the product of running well both early and late in a season. Just ask the 2011 version of Tony Stewart. Jimmie Johnson's run of five straight titles indicates that it certainly doesn't hurt, though. Earnhardt's Hendrick teammate for three of those record-breaking seasons, Johnson won just a single title – in 2006 – when his average finish dropped from 7.4 to 10.8 between the season's first ten and last ten events. Since then, the average finish in Johnson's title winning years has been stellar for Chase time, never rising above 6.8 (2009). In 2008, Johnson's turnaround in the season's opening and closing segments was nearly nine spots.

In today's point structure, that could be worth more than 90 points. The last two championships in NASCAR's top division have been decided by a grand total of 39.

Earnhardt's put forth an average finish of fifth to start this season. Even by Johnson's standards, it's a rate that's nearly unsustainable. But things are different for the No. 88 team this season, starting foremost with the newly-designed Chevy SS that Kannapolis, N.C.'s favorite son gets to drive. Earnhardt has made a point to note that the new platform seems to mesh better with his driving style than the heavier former model.

He's also made it keenly obvious that he's in tune with third-year crew chief Steve Letarte – even if there are moments of frustration for Earnhardt such as the middle of Sunday's event at Bristol when the car seemed unfixable.

Hoisting trophies and spraying championship champagne is a long way off for Earnhardt. To get there, he'll have to finish this season as good or better as he started it. Four races isn't nearly enough time to know if his No. 88 will actually be a factor, but it is enough to know that NASCAR's favorite son at least has a chance.

 

Kasey Kahne celebrates after winning the Food City 500. (AP)HOT: For as consistent as Earnhardt has been, it's equally important to note that Sunday's winner Kasey Kahne was an odds-on favorite at Daytona and missed a win at Las Vegas by just a few car lengths. Kahne, quiet most of 2012, rallied to a fourth-place finish in last year's title race. His ceiling is higher this year. 

NEUTRAL: I'd love to rip Fox for their seemingly nonsensical use of side-by-side commercial breaks exclusively during caution flags in Sunday's race, but such things aren't so simple in the world of television. Those breaks, by and far, are scheduled in advance and they just happened to fall when caution flags wave. One positive to look forward in that realm is the expectation set by Fox Sports 1 that most live sports will feature side-by-side commercial breaks.

HOT: It's always fun when dirty laundry hidden in NASCAR's typically tight-lipped culture comes out for all to see. Obviously, I'm referring to hubbub generated on and off track Sunday by Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. Logano seems to be seething over both Hamlin's driving tactics and teammate abilities, while Hamlin seems just as peeved for mostly unseen reasons. Is Hamlin a bad teammate? Is Logano miffed about being pushed out of a Sprint Cup ride at Joe Gibbs? We'll probably never fully know. But it's fun to ponder.

NOT: Speaking of Hamlin and Logano – I appreciate a well-crafted tweet designed to talk trash. But the Twitter tiff both had Sunday just felt lame. Perhaps they can host a Google Hangout next time to settle their differences.

HOT: Three races at Bristol for Brian Vickers driving in a Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota, and now three top-10 finishes. He's back at Martinsville, but you have to wonder if a full-time return to Cup isn't too far away for him.

NOT: Something obviously still isn't right at Bristol, based on how empty Sunday's grandstands were. NASCAR no longer does official attendance estimates, but if last August's night race had 145,000, there were maybe 80,000 people on hand Sunday. That's a big crowd, sure, but much closer to half capacity than full. I understand the spring brings questionable weather and hotels sell rooms for an arm and a leg. But how many of 158,000 possible fans really stay in a hotel to attend a Bristol race? It sounds like we've got a problem more to do with cost of tickets than anything.

HOT: A.J. Allmendinger has two top-15 finishes in two starts in the No. 51 this year for Phoenix Racing. The last time that the same driver scored top-15 finishes in that car in consecutive starts was 10 years ago – Mike Wallace finished 12th at Richmond and then 10th at Talladega in 2003. Combined with Austin Dillon and Regan Smith, the No. 51 has been no worse than 21st this season – easily the best four-race average ever put together by a team owned by Finch.

NOT: Raise your hand if you thought Danica Patrick would trail teammates Ryan Newman and Tony Stewart by fewer than 20 points in the Sprint Cup standings after four races. Anyone? Anyone?

HOT: Give a call to Kurt Busch (4th), Paul Menard (9th) and Jamie McMurray (10th). For Menard, that's now two top-10s this season. For McMurray, that's his first top-10 since Pocono last June. As for Kurt Busch? Not only was fourth his best finish on an oval since 2011, but also just the fourth top-5 in the history of Furniture Row Racing.

NEUTRAL: Matt Kenseth was caught in Jeff Gordon's crash Sunday, so he can't technically be "hot" this week. But without that, was anyone stopping Kenseth from making it two straight Sunday? I don't think so.

HOT: An interesting Bristol streak ended Sunday thanks to a poor late restart by  Keselowski and the plague of tire failures that hit Gordon, Hamlin and Johnson. Since NASCAR started publishing lap summary data in mid-2004, no winner at Bristol in the 18 races has been worse than fourth on Lap 350. The aforementioned drivers held those four spots on Lap 350, but Kasey Kahne managed to break the streak and prevail. Where was Kahne on Lap 350? Fifth.

The Stenica Showdown Cup!
We're keeping track each week of how NASCAR's most important (only?) competitive couple does against one another. This is a best-of-36 race, with the highest-finishing Sprint Cup result between Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. each week earning a point. Other points may be earned for various and completely inane reasons along the way (suggestions accepted), and the game ends if the couple uncouples.
 
Current standings:
1st - Ricky Stenhouse Jr., 3 points (16th at Bristol)
2nd - Danica Patrick., 1 point (28th at Bristol)
Will Danica ever be closer than two points the rest of the season? Ricky seems to be on a heater – three points in a row!

Chris Atkinson is ready for a one-off return to the WRC aboard a factory Citroen for Rally Mexico

• By William Dale
• SPEED
• March 07, 2013 2:05PM

 

He's back ... Atkinson has landed a one-off factory Citroen drive on Rally Mexico. Source: Supplied

Australian rally fans will have someone to cheer for this weekend at Rally Mexico, with Chris Atkinson landing a one-off drive with the Citroen World Rally team. 

Chris Atkinson Source: Supplied

 

'Atko' will step into the factory-run DS3 WRC usually piloted by Khalid Al Qassimi, the Qatari driver unavailable for the North American event due to other commitments.
"I'm always happy to be back in the WRC and race with a team as competitive as Citroën Racing," Atkinson said. "It’s an awesome opportunity for me, because I had no plans to take part in the World Championship this season."

Atkinson has been without a regular WRC drive since BMW pulled the plug on the factory Mini program at the end of 2012.

Rally Mexico has been a happy hunting ground for the 33-year-old in the past, scoring a second place finish aboard a Subaru in 2008 to go with a pair of top-10 finishes in 2006 and 2007.
It's been a while since he last piloted a works-backed Citroen, after landing a one-off drive at Rally Finland last year.
"I tested the car in Portugal last week and although it was raining, it did give me the chance to get back into the swing of things.
"These cars are amazing to drive and I’ve enjoyed success here in the past so a top-5 finish would be a sweet result for myself and the team."
It will be a very different WRC that Atkinson returns to. Volkswagen have arrived to give Citroen a run for their money, Sebastien Ogier landing their first win at the previous round in Sweden.
But the biggest change will be the absence of reigning world champion Sebastien Loeb in Mexico.
The nine-time world champion competed in the first two rallies of the season, winning in Monte Carlo, but will only return for Argentina and France as he enters semi-retirement from the forest stages.
Rally Mexico is the first world championship event without Loeb's name on the entry list since 2006, when he missed the final four rounds with injury.

2013 Phoenix NASCAR highlights

Power Rankings: Five-time still reigns supreme

By Nick Bromberg | From The Marbles – 23 hours ago

 

A new year means a new set of Power Rankings! After every race, we'll opine about who we think is at the top of the Sprint Cup heap and how and why they got there. Remember, this isn't scientific, as our formula is the perfect blend of analytics and bias against your favorite driver. So let's get on with it, shall we?

1. Jimmie Johnson (Last Week: 1): Wow, Jimmie, you're acclimating yourself quite nicely to the top spot. Sure you don't need anything? Drinks? Food? A hot towel? You're good? You're sure? Wow, it's like you've been here before. You're an old pro at this. Anyway, I know it's reeeeeeeally early, but would anyone be surprised if Jimmie Johnson led the points standings the entire regular season?

2.Dale Earnhardt Jr. (LW: 4): Did you know that Junior finished fifth on Sunday? That's two top fives to start the year for the driver who could formerly be known as NASCAR's Most Popular Driver. He hasn't done that to start the season since 2004, a year he finished fifth. Yeah, he's driving the second-best car in his shop. So what? Look at the points standings.

3. Brad Keselowski (LW: 3): You have to wonder if his previous conflict with Carl Edwards crossed Keselowski's mind at any point during the race's final caution flag. Yeah, Jetski and Carl have gotten along lately and there was no need to resuscitate that tiff over the two laps at Phoenix. But can you imagine the craziness that would have prevailed if Keselowski would have pushed Edwards into the wall instead of into the lead when the green flag waved?
4. Denny Hamlin (LW: 11): What? The Hamster is higher than Edwards? Well, previous performance has to have some bearing in these rankings, and he was here last week. And we loved that apron-cutting pass on the final lap so much that it merited a power rankings bump. Especially given that Hamlin started the race in the back of the pack because of a pre-race engine change.

5. Carl Edwards (LW: Not Ranked): NASCAR is rigged! They made it so the Subway car won the Subway race! How could they be so obvious?! If you actually believe that theory, then you should bet heavily on Jimmie Johnson at Las Vegas. It was a nice Daytona bounceback for Edwards, who might have changed tires fewer times at Phoenix than he crashed cars in Volusia County.
6. Clint Bowyer (LW: NR): Finishes of sixth and 11th in the first two races of the season will put you in fourth place in the points standings, sixth in the power rankings and who-knows-where in the hearts of NASCAR fans. Depends on how fast those hearts are beating from the rabid consumption of 5-Hour Energy, I guess.
7. Mark Martin (LW: 5): Yeah, Martin finished 21st, but leading 75 laps is good for something, right? Yeah, but those 75 laps were at the beginning of Sunday's race, and then Martin was never in contention after the halfway point. Does that sound anything like 2012?
8. Matt Kenseth (LW: NR): Can we safely put to bed any of the theories that Kenseth will struggle early in his transition to JGR? Yeah, he got bit by the JGR motor gremlins while leading at Daytona, but we've seen that they're not very discerning.
9. Aric Almirola (LW: NR): Bacon. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon. Did you know that if the regular season ended today that Almirola would make the Chase? No, you didn't. Don't lie.
10. Greg Biffle (LW: 6): Biffle would make the Chase too. he led briefly at Phoenix, but that was that early in the race and he finished 17th. Remember, this is an odd-numbered year.
11. AJ Allmendinger (LW: NR): Not a bad season debut for Allmendinger, eh? With his partial schedules in both the Sprint Cup and IndyCar Series, Allmendinger has a chance to become the first driver to post top 10s in the same year in both series since Tony Stewart.
12. Casey Mears (LW: NR): His 14th place finish was his highest since a 12th at Martinsville in 2011. And perhaps most importantly for Geico, he got a ton of TV time from the numerous replays showing Junior having to slow down on pit road to avoid Mears pulling into his pit stall.

Dropped Out: Danica Patrick, Regan Smith, Michael McDowell, JJ Yeley, Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Lucky Dog: Oh man, you got any ideas?

The Front Row Racing DNF: Front Row Racing! It's been a brutal opening two races for the team. All three cars were involved in the same accident at Daytona, and the Davids Gilliland and Ragan crashed again at Phoenix while Josh Wise finished 35th.

Sprint Cup series update

By David Newton | ESPN.com

 

 

 

Two races into the 2013 Sprint Cup season, in case anybody is counting …
•  There have been 40 lead changes in the new Gen-6 car, 28 in the Daytona 500 and 12 in Sunday's race at Phoenix International Raceway. That's 10 fewer than there were a year ago -- 25 each at Daytona and Phoenix -- in the Gen-5, formerly known as the Car of Tomorrow.
Bottom line, it's still too early to judge whether the new car -- designed to improve racing at mile-and-a-half tracks -- has improved racing overall. We'll know a lot more after next week's race at Las Vegas, a 1.5-mile track.
Let's let Denny Hamlin and points leader Jimmie Johnson explain.
"I don't want to be the pessimist, but it did not race as good as our Generation 5 cars," Hamlin told reporters in Phoenix. "This is more like what the Generation 5 was at the beginning. The teams hadn't figured out how to get the aero balance right.

"Right now, you just run single-file and you cannot get around the guy in front of you. … It's just one of those things where track position is everything."
Said Johnson, who followed his Daytona 500 win with a second-place finish, "It didn't seem a lot different than other races here to me since the reconfiguration. I don't think the Gen-6 car has anything to do with it at this point.
"The cars are equal, and when they're equal, you're going to have a situation like this. What we need now is the racetracks to consider the asphalt they're putting down and even reconfigure the lanes so that we have somewhere to race."
•  Dale Earnhardt Jr. is off to an even better start than a year ago. His fifth-place finish at PIR following a second at Daytona leaves him second in points, eight behind Hendrick Motorsports teammate Johnson.
A year ago, NASCAR's most popular driver opened with a second and 14th that left him fifth in the standings, 17 points behind Hamlin.
Earnhardt actually was in position to win Sunday until eventual winner Carl Edwards got off pit road ahead of him because Earnhardt had to lift as Casey Mears slowed to get into his pit stall.
"I knew right then that was my opportunity to win the race," said Earnhardt, who led 47 laps. "It's difficult to pass with the big spoiler. But our car was good enough to actually run up on some guys and make some passes.
"I was a little disappointed because I think we could have won. And you hate to give away them points."
•  As thrilled as Edwards was to end a 70-race losing streak on Sunday, he actually left Phoenix one spot worse in the standings than he was a year ago.
Edwards was 10th in the standings in 2012 after an eighth and 17th. He is 11th this year after a 33rd and first.
But the perception -- and maybe reality -- is he's far better now.
•  Danica Patrick is 22nd in the standings after a 39th-place finish at PIR. Her boyfriend, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., is ninth. Stenhouse hasn't done anything spectacular or historic, but he's been the more consistent of the couple battling for rookie of the year with a 12th in the Daytona 500 and 16th at PIR.
Patrick, who was the story a week ago with her historic eighth-place run at Daytona, retired Sunday after hitting the wall on Lap 185.
"You have to look at the positives and learn from the things we need to make better, but for the second weekend together I think we're definitely heading in the right direction," Stenhouse said.
The good news for Patrick? She's a spot ahead of Stewart-Haas Racing boss Tony Stewart.
•  Phoenix Racing has the upper hand in the battle of single-car teams that are not a lateral move from one another. Regan Smith finished seventh in the Daytona 500 for the Spartanburg-based organization, and AJ Allmendinger was 11th at Phoenix. That's an average finish of 9.0
Kurt Busch in the Furniture Row Racing car has finished 28th and 27th, an average of 27.5.
•  Half a dozen high-profile drivers -- including four who made the Chase last season -- are 23rd or worse in points.
Those from last year's Chase class struggling are Tony Stewart (23rd), Kevin Harvick (30th), Kasey Kahne (31st) and Martin Truex Jr. (34th). Others off to a slow start include Kurt Busch (32nd) and Kyle Busch (33rd).
The bad news is they only have one more race before current owners' points are used to determine who potentially could miss a race with the return to having to qualify. A year ago, teams in the top 35 from the previous year were locked in for five races.
The good news is Truex, in the worst spot, is only 24 points behind Marcos Ambrose in 12th.
In other words, it's way too early to panic. Kahne was 31st six races into last season and was 10th entering the Chase.