Lap-by-Lap: Dover

NASCAR.COM
June 4, 2006
05:27 PM EDT (21:27 GMT)
Lap 327: Green flag -- Jamie McMurray leads.
Lap 324: Pit stops -- Jimmie Johnson, Jeremy Mayfield and others have made adjustments. Jamie McMurray still leads.
Lap 320: Caution -- Kevin Lepage takes a firery ride into Turn 3.
Lap 313: Green flag -- Jamie McMurray leads. Jimmie Johnson is back on the lead lap.
Lap 302: Pit stops/Lead change -- Jeff Burton makes minor adjustments. Matt Kenseth wants no adjustments. Kevin Harvick and Ryan Newman get fuel only. Jamie McMurray didn't stop and takes the lead.
Lap 299: Caution -- A real mess. Elliott Sadler hits the wall in Turn 3, appearing to slip on some fluid put down by Kevin Lepage's No. 49.
Lap 295: Green flag -- Kyle Busch leads. Meanwhile, Ricky Rudd is 25th in relief of Tony Stewart.
Lap 294: Ryan Newman, Kevin Harvick and others are back on pit road to top off their fuel.
Lap 292: Pit stops -- Kevin Harvick and Ryan Newman are in for tires and adjustments.
Lap 291: Caution -- J. J Yeley hits the wall in Turn 3 -- again. After review, Jamie McMurray is the Lucky Dog.
Lap 289: Green flag -- Kyle Busch leads.
Lap 284: Caution -- J.J. Yeley hits the wall in Turn 3. Bobby Labonte is the Lucky Dog.
Lap 280: Lead change -- Kyle Busch takes the lead for the first time today.
Lap 279: Green flag -- Matt Kenseth leads.
Lap 275: Pit stops -- Both Jimmie Johnson and David Stremme pit for adjustments. Also, Mark Martin is among a handful of teams in for adjustments.
Lap 274: Caution -- Points leader Jimmie Johnson's bad day gets worse. He made contact with David Stremme on the backstretch.
Lap 270: Green flag -- Matt Kenseth leads.
Lap 267: Trouble for Mark Martin. He's missing a lugnut after his stop. He needs to go back in amongst the lapped cars.
Lap 265: Pit stops -- Lead-lap cars are in. Matt Kenseth wins the race off of pit road after a 13.3-second stop.
Lap 264: Caution -- Debris in Turn 2. Total green-flag run: 144 laps.
Lap 262: Mark Martin's lead is now nearly two seconds on second-place Matt Kenseth.
Lap 240: We've now been green for 120 laps.
Lap 238: Lead change -- Mark Martin blows by Jeff Burton for the top spot. Matt Kenseth has also passed Burton for second.
Lap 214: Lead change -- Carl Edwards makes his stop, as Jeff Burton takes the lead back.
Lap 212: Lead change -- Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson make stops, giving lead to Carl Edwards.
Lap 210: Leader Jeff Burton is in for an air-pressure adjustment and four tires. Meanwhile, Ricky Rudd is penalized for too fast exiting pit road.
Lap 209: Jeff Gordon, Jeremy Mayfield, Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr. make green-flag stops.
Lap 208: Mark Martin, Ricky Rudd make green-flag stops.
Lap 206: Green-flag pit stops -- Denny Hamlin, Scott Riggs, David Stremme and Tony Raines in.
Lap 204: Ricky Rudd falls a lap down in the No. 20 Chevy. He's in 20th.
Lap 202: Lead change -- Jeff Burton takes the lead back as Ricky Rudd is trying desperately to stay on the lead lap.
Lap 200: At halfway -- Matt Kenseth leads.
Lap 176: Lead change -- Matt Kenseth get back out in front of Jeff Burton.
Lap 163: Lead change -- Jeff Burton takes first from Matt Kenseth.
Lap 151: Hermie Sadler has retired from the race, freeing up a pit stall for Scott Wimmer.
Lap 147: Hermie Sadler has taken his car to the garage. If the car retires, Scott Wimmer will be able to take that pit stall, giving he and Jimmie Johnson stalls of their own.
Lap 130: Jeff Gordon, who led 10 laps before, is back to fourth, more than 3 seconds behind.
Lap 120: Lead change -- Matt Kenseth passes Jeff Gordon for the top spot.
Lap 120: Green flag -- Jeff Gordon leads.
Lap 118: Scott Wimmer, who is sharing a pit stall with Jimmie Johnson today, is out of fuel.
Lap 116: Pit stops -- Jeff Gordon gets and air pressure adjustment. Problems for Mark Martin's pit stop, as he loses three spots, to sixth.
Lap 115: Caution -- Debris in Turn 4. Travis Kvapil is the Lucky Dog.
Lap 109: J.J. Yeley heads to the pits with a right-front tire problem.
Lap 100: At the quarter pole -- Jeff Gordon leads second-place Mark Martin by nearly a second. Ricky Rudd has the No. 20 car in 27th place.
Lap 66: Jeff Gordon's lead is now nearly a second on second-place Mark Martin.
Lap 56: Kyle Busch, who started 29th, is threatening to enter the top 10.
Lap 46: Stewart to FX's Matt Yocum: "I wasn't very comfortable at all."
Lap 41: Green flag/Lead change -- Jeff Gordon, who won the race off of pit road, leads. Meanwhile, the No. 20 car restarts 37th.
Lap 40: The No. 20 team now returns to the pits to make adjustments to the car. The team made the driver change in 1 minute on the nose.
Lap 39: Driver change -- Tony Stewart exits the No. 20 Chevy as Ricky Rudd enters the machine.
Lap 37: Tony Stewart stays out in order to give Ricky Rudd as much time as possible to make the driver change. Meanwhile, Jeremy Mayfield makes contact with Denny Hamlin on pit road.
Lap 36: Caution -- Tony Raines spins at the entrance to Turn 4. Dale Jarrett is the Lucky Dog.
Lap 33: Points leader Jimmie Johnson goes a lap down to leader Mark Martin. Meanwhile, Ricky Rudd continues to stand by.
Lap 27: Lead change -- Mark Martin passes Jeremy Mayfield for the top spot.
Lap 22: Mark Martin is up to second and gaining on leader Jeremy Mayfield.
Lap 20: Tony Stewart has gained 14 spots, to 28th, since the race start.
Lap 13: Lead change -- Jeremy Mayfield takes the top spot from Ryan Newman.
Lap 8: Tony Stewart has gained nine positions since the race start.
Lap 5: Tony Stewart is clearly not afraid. He just went three-wide.
Lap 1: Ryan Newman leads the first lap.
2:22 p.m. -- Green flag -- Ryan Newman leads.
2:18 p.m. -- Chad Knaus has told FOX that the 48 team will pit both the 48 and 4 teams, since the two teams are sharing a pit stall.
2:16 p.m. -- Jamie McMurray will start at the back due to an engine change.
2:14 p.m. -- The engines have been fired.
2:07 p.m. -- Stephanie Iverson performs the national anthem.
2:02 p.m. -- Tony Stewart is introduced to the crowd. It appears he can't even put his right arm all the way down.
2:00 p.m. -- Ryan Newman admits to Chris Myers that he's not much of a romantic.
1:36 p.m. -- Tony Stewart tells Darrell Waltrip he should be good to run the full race next week at Pocono.
1:31 p.m. -- FX is on the air.
1:02 p.m. -- Robby Gordon has returned from Baja. He attended the pre-race drivers' meeting.
1:01 p.m. -- Remember that despite a 10th-place qualifying spot, Tony Stewart will start the race from the rear because it was Ricky Rudd that qualified the car.

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PRESS RELEASE
Dodge NNCS Teams Post-Dover Race Recaps
Dodge Motorsports/Clear!Blue Communications Press Release


KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“The guys did a good job today. We kept the car in one piece. It was a long day, and it was a tough race. We’re happy. It was a good run for us. It’s the best run I’ve had here yet as far as the finish goes. I’m happy we got a top 10 and brought it home in one piece. We’ll keep working on it and try to bring it back next time and do better. We worked on the car all day. We just didn’t make it a lot better. We made it better at times, but we never got that little bit we were looking for. We came close. We weren’t far from it. I think traffic slowed you down, but we just needed a little bit more and we could have passed cars and got to the front. I feel good about where we’re at. It was a good points day. We’re halfway to The Chase. We’ve just got to keep being consistent in these next 13 races and we’ll be in good shape.”


RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger)

“We had a top five car pretty much all day with the exception of track position and a bad pit stop that set us back and we never did recover. It seemed like the 6 and 99 had similar situations. Once they got in the back and they couldn’t recover. They didn’t have time to recover I don’t guess. It was a decent run for the Alltel Dodge. It wasn’t a good finishing position to run as well as we did most of the race. We ran in the top five most of the race and that’s more than we can say about most races this season. We’re still working to get things going in the right direction and today was a step in that direction. Pocono has been a good track. We’ve got to hit our things right and have a good day there. We can still make up the points and get in The Chase. We’ve got to work really hard. Fourteenth-place finishes won’t cut it. We’ve got to have top fives and top 10s from here on out.”


CASEY MEARS (No. 42 Texaco/Havoline Dodge Charger)

“We were OK there for awhile and could run decent on a long run. We were pretty slow on the first 10 or 15 laps. We just couldn’t go. We got a loose set of tires in the middle of the race and the next set of tires tightened up the car. The car was way too tight then and we fought that the rest of the way. The last set of tires we left the left rear loose and it was shaking real bad that whole run and we lost a lot of spots.”


BOBBY LABONTE (No. 43 Cheerios/Betty Crocker Dodge Charger)

“It wasn’t too bad. We started off pretty good. We were at our best midway in the race. We just got a little bit off and got a lap down on a green flag stop. We battled back and got our lap back and ended up 13th. It was a pretty good day. We picked up a couple of spots in the standings, but we’ve just got to keep working hard and getting better.”


JEREMY MAYFIELD (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

“We learned some things today, and it shows our program is making progress. We could have had a better finish, but it wasn’t because we had to chase the track all day. We led laps early and ran extremely well the first 100 miles. The car was really loose midway through the race, so we had a lot of work to do to regain the handling. We managed to do that over the last 100 laps. We’re making progress and will be going to two tracks where we have run well and won at in the past. We’re looking forward to the next two weeks.”


SCOTT RIGGS (No. 10 Valvoline/Stanley Tools Dodge Charger)

“We got a bad set of tires early in the race that made the car extremely tight, and that’s when we fell a lap down. Rodney (team director Childers) never gave up adjusting on the car, and the crew knocked off some pretty strong pit stops to get us in the "Lucky Dog" position. In the end this car was way too sensitive to the adjustments we threw at it. I don’t know if that is something tire or body-wise, but we plan on figuring that out before we bring it back to the track.”


KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

“We worked hard today and learned a lot that will hopefully help us when we come back to Dover in the fall. That’ll be on of The Chase races, and we’ve got 13 races left to work our way back into the top 10. We’re at the halfway point and we’re not that far out of 10th place (265 points). We’ll have to work hard and start getting top fives and top 10s, but we’ve got some good tracks coming up. It’ll be a challenge, but it’ll be fun trying.”


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Ryan Newman, Daytona 500 Champion!!
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