June 5, 2007
By Ron Felix

Team Celebrates * CIA Stock Photo

Martin Truex Jr. picked up his first Nextel Cup victory in 58 career races by dominating the Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway on Monday. The race was delayed because of rain in the area on Sunday, leaving the track without any rubber -- so NASCAR -- for the first time in my memory -- called for two competition cautions to check tire wear. The cars that were setup properly, and Truex apparently had one of those, had fewer problems with the tires.

Truex led six times for a total 216 laps of 400 and broke the Hendrick Motorsports string of five straight wins in the new car but the six races for the new car have all been won by Chevrolets. The victory was the 12th of 13 races this year. Only Matt Kenseth, driving a Ford for Jack Roush, has won in a make other than Chevrolet.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the first to congratulate Truex in Victory Lane.

"He said, 'I told you, you could do it, man.' It means a lot," Truex explained. "He's been a great friend. He said, 'I'll see you at the house tonight.' So we're going to have some fun. But I can't thank these guys enough for their hard work. They work their guts out every week. The guys at the shop and the motors have come a long way. All the guys at our shop really work hard - seven days a week sometimes until all hours of the night. I just want to thank them and Teresa (Earnhardt) and Max (Siegel) and Richie Gilmore. There are so many people to thank - all the guys who have helped me get to this level. It's just a great day for all of us."

Pole sitter Ryan Newman led the early part of the race and finished second with Carl Edwards in the third spot. Denny Hamlin was fourth followed by Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, Mark Martin, Clint Bowyer, Jeff Gordon and Robby Gordon to round out the top ten.

Jimmie Johnson had a good day and a bad day. Johnson started 27th and was working his way through the field only to have to pit twice under the first competition caution. Johnson restarted 36th and methodically worked his way to the front. While running second to Truex Jr., Johnson fell off the pace with a flat right rear tire on his No. 48 Lowe's Impala SS, but worked his way back through the field with just 15 laps remaining to recover with a 15th place finish.

"We overcame a lot today," Johnson said. "I though we were in position to maybe win or at least finish second and then a right rear went down on us. I think maybe ours was a puncture of some kind. I am not sure what happened to the other guys that had problems. I really think ran something over because I was really good and went from catching the No.1 (Martin Truex, Jr.) a little bit at a time to really loose and losing spots."

On lap 275, Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart started playing bumper tag. It appeared that the two drivers made contact several times, and Busch dove below Stewart to make a pass, and then tried to slide back up in front of Stewart. The only problem was Busch wasn't by Stewart and Stewart wasn't going to let him have the spot. The stubbornness of each driver put both cars into the wall.

"He just wasn't clear off of (Turn) 4," said Stewart. "It's a shame because we've been racing him how he has raced us for a whole year. He's raced us every lap like it pays a million dollars, so I've kind of adopted Matt Kenseth's policy of racing guys the same way they race me. He never was clear and came off the corner and crashed both of us."

Then as Stewart was stopped in his pit stall, Busch pull alongside Stewart, stopped and started screaming at him.

"I didn't see him until the last minute," Stewart continued, "but he about hit one of our crew guys. So that was self-explanatory I think.

"I've never tried to wreck him. I've had plenty of chances to wreck the guy. That's not what it was about. It's about racing people with respect and he hasn't done that with anybody for a year. You finally get to the point where you're tired of giving guys positions. Most of the guys are pretty good. There are only a couple of bad apples out there and he's one of them. When you've got guys that you let go every time they get to you and they don't do the same thing when the roles are reversed, you finally get tired of it.

"You finally learn to race those guys they way they race you. You don't see me having problems with Mark Martin and the guys that run up front every week. His brother figured it out and his brother and I have gotten along great and have no problems. This is a sport that is so competitive that you can't afford to give guys positions all the time if they're not going to do it back for you. I'm just going to race guys the way they race me. Like I said, I don't have problems with 95 percent of the guys out there. It's only a couple."

NASCAR ejected Busch from the race on the spot and everyone involved, including both crew chiefs, were summoned to the NASCAR trailer for consultation.

“We were racing real well, 10-15 laps side by side," said Kurt Busch. "My car was just inching on him. He hit me on a couple of other restarts. I really don’t know what he was all about today. He didn’t give an inch. I saw a ton of cars stack up in the mirror behind us, which meant we were racing way too hard. He didn’t want to give an inch. He hit me on the restarts twice. I think he got his mission accomplished. I have no idea (if this stemmed from something else), but I know that he hit us so many times today mission accomplished for Tony.

“I wanted to make a point, but when you make a point like that it always ends up making it worse," Busch continued, explaing what took place on pit road. "It was my fault for doing that. The issue was out on the racetrack. It was not on pit road.”

David Ragan finished 14th and took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors for the sixth time in 13 races.

“We had a decent day, our best COT run so far," said Ragan. "I felt like maybe we had a little better car at Martinsville, maybe even at Richmond. To finish in the top-15 was a good points day. I couldn’t afford to go out there and race too hard because if something was to happen, we kind of dug ourselves a hole last week by getting in that wreck. So I had to be conservative at times which I’m sure that hurt us a little bit. But we kept working on the car and our pit stops were good. There’s always a few things we can improve on as a team.

"We’ll improve and try to get ‘em next week. I lost some ground on pit road, that green flag pit stop, I just didn’t take off as good as I needed to and lost a few seconds. I like this place. It’s a fun track to drive. We’re just trying to find how hard we can run and take care of our cars. That’s the whole deal. We can’t be sitting in the garage at the end of the race. We’ve got to be out there racing.”

Unofficially Juan Pablo Montoya leads Ragan by five points (141-136) in the Raybestos Rookie standings.

Considering everything the team has been through this week, Robby Gordon had a good day, finishing tenth. Gordon was off during the weekend, down in Mexico running the off road race there, where he finished second in his class in the Baja. P.J. Jones practiced the car for Gordon and set the car up for him and then the team had to change engines, so Gordon had to start at the rear of the field.

"I knew Gene (Nead, Gordon's new crew chief) would make an impact with the Car of Tomorrow," Said Gordon. "We only had one test with Gene, about a week ago. We learned a lot, the cars are very, very driveable. And when you can race with Jeff Gordon and finish in the top 10, you can race to win. So, we had a car plenty capable – started in the back and worked our way to the front. I’m real happy about that, and real happy about the Ford power plant. It didn’t seem like we were down on power at all. It seemed like we were very competitive all day long.”

The Nextel Cup Series moves to Pocono Raceway next Sunday, June 10th, for the Pocono 500. The race begins at 2 p.m. EDT with live, high-definition coverage provided by TNT.



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