Dover... The Monster Mile

Qualifying on Friday never took place due to rain. Jimmie Johnson would then start in the 1st place position, but is not awarded a pole award because he did not earn it in a qualifying session. The rain managed to stay away to allow the race to go all 400 laps at Dover.

Dover Results:
1. Matt Kenseth
2. Mark Martin
3. Marcos Ambrose
4. Kyle Busch
5. Brian Vickers   -First top 5 finish of 2011
6. Clint Bowyer
7. Carl Edwards   -Holds the best average finish at Dover with 7.7 (before today's race)
8. Martin Truex Jr  -His only win came here at Dover, today was his 200th career start
9. Jimmie Johnson  -Led 207 laps, and has led in the last eight straight races in 2011
10. Kevin Harvick  -Started 10th, finished 10th... consistent race

Noteable Drivers:

11. Jeff Burton

12. Dale Earnhardt Jr

14. Kurt Busch

16. Denny Hamlin

17. Jeff Gordon

18. Bobby Labonte

*J. Gordon has led over 2,000 laps at Dover (most among all drivers in NASCAR)

*B. Labonte won the June 1999 race at Dover

   Congratulations to Matt Kenseth on his second win of 2011, second win at Dover, and his 20th career Sprint Cup Series win. Coming into today's race Kenseth had finished 4th or better at five of the last six Dover races. As a result from today's race Kenseth goes from 10th in the standings to 6th. The Jack Roush Racing cars always perform well at the tough tracks to drive like Dover, Darlington, Texas, and Atlanta. Today was no different as Kenseth, Edwards and Ragan had very fast race cars for this event. Edwards led over 100 laps in today's race, but due to teams electing to take only two tires he couldn't recover back to the top 3 for the end of the race. Carl's 7th place finish today is his 9th top 10 of the 11 races completed this season. Mark Martin impressed even the experts like Darrell Waltrip with how he was able to only allow one car to pass him while having much older tires than the rest of the competition. If Mark held off Matt to win the race, it would have been Mark's 5th victory at Dover and his 41st career Sprint Cup Series victory. After seeing Mark's car perform all race I predicted he wouldn't last 15 laps in the top 10, boy was I wrong.

   The strategy for Mark Martin almost prevailed. Mark elected to not pit with about 30 laps to go at an attempt to win the race. He was running about 15th place anyway, might as well gamble. After finishing second Mark goes from 14th to 11th in the Sprint Cup Series standings. This caused the dominant drivers to be mired in traffic for the restart like Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards, and Clint Bowyer. Johnson led 207 laps today, it was Edwards and Johnson swapping the lead all race long. The fastest pit crews in my opinion were the #48 team, #33 team, #99 team, and #24 team. They did well at advancing their position while on pit road, but Gordon was never able to hold on to those gained spots. If we were going to see a first time Sprint Cup Series winner today it would have been by David Ragan or A.J. Allmendinger. Early in the race while running in the top 10 the #6 car of Ragan spun out while entering pit road for green flag pit stops. After his stop was completed he found himself a lap down in 26th. Allmendinger raced the first 150 laps in the top 5, after engine problems he pulled his #43 Best Buy Ford to the garage area. You could hear the disappointment in A.J.'s voice during an interview. He now drops five spots in the standings to 16th.

   The top 18 cars were strong enough to finish on the lead lap like Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, and Greg Biffle did everything they could to keep themselves from going a lap down. Gordon is lucky he never once fell a lap down because his race car today was not competitive at all. The #24 car got as high as 9th place, but he was inside the top 20 for the majority of the race. This really shocks me because your talking about a driver that is a 4 time Dover winner and has led over 2,000 laps at this historical circuit. Despite the 17th place finish Gordon moves up three spots in the standings to 14th.

   The veterans of NASCAR struggled to get any where near the front in today's race. Jeff Burton finished in 2nd place in both Dover races in 2010, but he failed to earn his first top 10 of 2011 in today's race by finishing 11th. There was a few times where I thought Burton was going to keep himself in the top 10 and earn an impressive finish. Kurt Busch in the #22 car couldn't figure out their rear grip issue and so he finished in 14th place. Kurt Busch would get the "free pass" for being the first car a lap down on lap 331 for Kasey Kahne's engine troubles, this helped him finish as well as he did. However I can't say the same for Kasey Kahne who ended up earning a DNF, 36th place. He was hoping for another strong performance after finishing 4th in Darlington. As a result Kasey drops from 15th to 18th in the Sprint Cup standings.

*Fast Fact: Richard Petty won the very first NASCAR race at Dover in 1969.
Images from: http://www.nascar.com/news/110515/mkenseth-dover-win/index.html
Written by: Tyler McMurter