Now, where do we start? It’s not often we can say that “pit in” determined the outcome of the race, but you could certainly make an argument for it today. With about 80 laps to go in today’s MBNA 400 “A Salute to Heroes” 400 at Dover International Speedway, we finally had our first round of green-flag pit stops. After racing 320 laps, I guess a few guys forgot how tricky this pit-road entrance can be.
First Tony Stewart totally missed it. He had to make an extra lap and that probably cost him the race. Then came the telling move. Ryan Newman spun coming in, hit the cones, hit the tires that protect the end of pit wall, and brought out the caution that would lead to “THE BIG ONE”. What’s that you say? You think it only happens at Talladega? We had an 19 car job today in turn 3….and it was a major mess.
But, before we got to that point, a few other observations….
Ryan Newman got the deal of the century. He had no less than 4 infractions (hitting the commit-line cones, spinning on pit road, pitting too early, running the stop sign at pit out), and his team spent the next 20 laps complaining that he was getting a ONE LAP PENALTY.
So, while NASCAR was covering itself in ignominity trying to figure out who was where “at the moment of caution”, not to mention who was the “lucky dog”, we lost a ton of laps to that confusion. BTW, NASCAR seems to lead the league in confusion lately. Since this was not NASCAR’s finest hour (keeping the WWII theme intact), they topped it off by not throwing a caution when Casey Mears grenaded an engine in turn 4 and Kasey Kahne was lucky enough to be the first car through that area….about 20 seconds later. He was toast….
When the concrete dust settled (how come this is one of the last tracks to get “soft walls”? Buddy Baker was telling us 15 years ago the hardest hits in NASCAR came at Dover!), it was Mark Martin in Victory Lane….and it’s been quite awhile since he’d graced that location.
Martin’s victory broke a 72 race losing streak (his last win was the Coke 600 at Lowe’s in May of 2002), and was the 34th of his Cup career. This breaks a 17th place tie with the legendary Fireball Roberts on the all-time win list, and was win #70 for Jack Roush. His 4th win at Dover was worth $271,900 from the nearly $5.5M in posted awards.
17 DNF’s today…..they don’t call this place the Monster Mile for nuttin’!
Tony Stewart (2nd) had his best finish since he was the runner-up at Daytona in February.
Jeff Burton (4th) had his best finish since he was 4th at Richmond last September.
Scott Riggs (5th) had his career-best finish today. His previous best was 15th at Texas in April.
Burton & Riggs’ Top-5’s now gives us 21 drivers at that number (last year we had 30). Riggs’ Top-10 gives us 30 drivers at that mark (last years number was 42).
Scott Wimmer (9th) had his best finish since he was 3rd at the 500 in February.
Jimmy Spencer (17th) had his best finish since he was 14th at Rockingham last November.
STREAKIN….Dale Earnhardt Jr has 6 Top-10’s in the last 7 races.
This Week’s Elevator….UP: Operator of the week (for the second time this season) is Terry Labonte (+27), followed by Jimmy Spencer (+24), Dale Earnhardt Jr (+23), and Kevin Harvick (+23). DOWN: The Big Dropper was a tie between Jeff Gordon (-23) and Stanton Barrett (-23), followed by Brendan Gaughan (-22). This was also Gordon’s second BD of the season.
We’re halfway thru the season fans (we’re gonna have to consider this a 26 race season for all but 10 drivers, after all), and we’re down to just the Top-10 currently eligible for this year’s Chase. Sure didn’t take us long to get there, huh?
Jeff Burton (29th to 24th) made the best move forward today in the points, while Greg Biffle (21st to 25th) and Joe Nemechek (23rd to 27th) fell the most spots.(StockCarFans.Com Nextelcup Newsletter)(6-6-2004)