2009 Samsung 500

The 2009 Samsung 500 was the seventh stock car race of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. It was held on April 5, 2009, at Texas Motor Speedway, in Fort Worth, Texas before a crowd of 176,300 people. The 334-lap race was won by Jeff Gordon of the Hendrick Motorsports team after starting from second position. His teammate Jimmie Johnson finished second and Roush Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle placed third.

Gordon was the Drivers' Championship leader with 959 points entering the event. David Reutimann won the pole position by recording the fastest lap time in the qualifying session, and maintained his lead going into the first corner to begin the race, but Gordon took over the lead before the first lap was over. Afterward, Reutimann took back the lead, holding it until Matt Kenseth passed him on lap 47. Gordon led after the final pit stops. In the final laps, Johnson was gaining on Gordon, but Gordon maintained the lead to achieve the race victory. There were six cautions and twenty-eight lead changes among thirteen different drivers during the race.

The race was Gordon's first win of the 2009 season, and the eighty-second of his career. The result kept Gordon in the lead of the Drivers' Championship, one-hundred and sixty-two ahead of Johnson, and one-hundred and eighty ahead of Kurt Busch. Chevrolet increased its lead in the Manufacturers' Championship, ten points ahead of Ford, who bumped Toyota to third place, with twenty-nine races remaining in the season remaining. The race attracted 7.4 million television viewers.

The 2009 Samsung 500 was the seventh of thirty-six scheduled stock car races of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. It took place on April 5, 2009, in Fort Worth, Texas, at Texas Motor Speedway, an intermediate track that holds NASCAR races. The standard track at Texas Motor Speedway is a four-turn quad-oval track that is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long. The track's turns are banked at twenty-four degrees, and both the front stretch (the location of the finish line) and the back stretch have a five degree banking.

Before the race, Jeff Gordon led the Drivers' Championship with 959 points, followed by Clint Bowyer with 870. Kurt Busch was third with 827 points, Jimmie Johnson was fourth with 817 and Denny Hamlin was fifth with 811 points. Kurt's younger brother Kyle Busch, along with Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top ten. In the Manufacturers' Championship, Chevrolet was leading with 39 points, five points ahead of their rival Toyota. Ford, with 32 points, was five points ahead of Dodge in the battle for third place. Edwards was the race's defending champion.

Jeff Gordon had not won a race at Texas Motor Speedway in 16 attempts and said he would not base anything based on his second-place finish at the circuit in late 2008, "The team worked hard over the offseason and our performances on intermediate tracks have improved. We are just a different team with different race cars right now. Texas is one of those places that is on my radar. I want to turn things around and conquer it."

Three practice sessions were before the Sunday race — one on Friday, and two on Saturday. The first session lasted 90 minutes, while the second session lasted 45 minutes. The third and final practice session lasted 60 minutes. During the first practice session, Mark Martin was fastest with a lap of 28.467 seconds, placing ahead of David Reutimann in second and Kurt Busch in third. Greg Biffle was scored fourth, and Johnson placed fifth. Jeff Gordon, Edwards, Dale Earnhardt Jr., David Stremme and David Ragan rounded out the top ten fastest drivers in the session.

Forty-eight drivers were entered in the qualifier on Friday afternoon; according to NASCAR's qualifying procedure, forty-three were allowed to race. Each driver ran two laps, with the starting order determined by the competitor's fastest times. Reutimann clinched his second pole position in the Sprint Cup Series, with a time of 28.344 seconds. He was joined on the grid's front row by Jeff Gordon, who held the pole position until Reutimann's lap. Matt Kenseth qualified third, Ragan took fourth in his best qualifying performance of the season, and Paul Menard started fifth to put three Fords in the first five places. Kahne in sixth was the sole Dodge driver in the top ten positions. Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Johnson were in places seventh to ninth. Joey Logano followed in tenth place due to his car being difficult to steer. The five drivers who failed to qualify were Joe Nemechek, Scott Speed, Jeremy Mayfield, Todd Bodine and Scott Riggs. After the qualifier Reutimann said, "We had a great car all day, right off the truck. This pole reminds me of how much things have changed for me in the past few years. I didn't make the field here two years ago, during a bad time in my racing career."