Edwards Win in Limbo After Car Fails Post-Race Inspection

Edwards held off a late charge by Greg Biffle, who finished second, followed by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Mark Martin and Kyle Busch.

Photo courtesy: doverspeedway.com

DOVER, Del. - Fans at Sunday's Dodge Dealers 400 at Dover International Speedway saw plenty of entertainment - a record 13 caution flags, two spins, six accidents, a fight in the garage, Martin Truex, Jr. limping around the track in the final laps with no radiator and smoking like a '78 Vega, and overall a race where the standings in the "Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup" jumbled up and re-ordered as if they were dice in a game of Yahtzee.

In the end, the fans also got to see Carl Edwards take a backflip off the roof of his car after picking up his third win of 2007 and his first NASCAR NEXTEL Cup win at Dover.

He held off a late charge by Greg Biffle, who finished second, followed by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Mark Martin and Kyle Busch. Casey Mears rounded out the group of just six cars that was on the lead lap when the race ended.

"I just had a good time," Edwards said. "The only trouble we had was the throttle pedal was hanging up early, but we came in and fixed that. Greg was pretty fast at the end and had good tires, so I was glad there wasn't another caution. I didn't need another restart."

While the win was certainly big for Edwards - it propelled him from eighth place in the Chase into a virtual tie for the lead - it was overshadowed somewhat by the sheer number of cars that were decimated over the course of the day, as well as some of the extracurricular activity that followed.

"I've never seen so much carnage in my entire life," said ESPN analyst Rusty Wallace.

The race proceeded like a typical Dover race for about 200 miles.

There were a couple one-car accidents, and the only thing out of the ordinary that happened was an unfortunate incident on pit road when a car hit a tire that had gotten loose and sent it flying into Art Harris, the gasman for Michael Waltrip's No. 55 NAPA team.

Harris was taken to a local hospital, where he was treated and released.

At lap 205, Denny Hamlin tangled with Kyle Petty on the backstretch, putting Petty out of the race and causing heavy damage to his own car.

Tensions spilled over in the garage, where Petty confronted Hamlin while Hamlin was still in his car.

Hamlin then got out of his car, and he and Petty had to be separated.

"I guess it's my fault," Petty said. "I watched the Busch race yesterday and I knew Denny was sick, I just didn't know he was hallucinating and needed three lanes to get up off the corner because he ran all over us."

Hamlin said he was surprised by Petty's reaction.

"I think a lot of it was his frustration over this whole top-35 thing, but we're racing for bigger and better things," Hamlin said. "He just said it wasn't racing, and absolutely it wasn't racing. I wasn't racing him. I was battling for position and I think he was several seconds off the pace and trying to do his best to get out of the way, the two cars made contact. I ran into the back of him, absolutely. But he came off the corner 10 mph slower than he had in laps before and I wasn't counting on that happening. He's trying to battle those few cars for a top-35, and we're trying to battle for a championship."

After Jamie McMurray spun 25 laps later, the race ran under green for the next 120 miles until a caution came out at lap 356 for debris on the racetrack.

Coming out of the caution with 40 laps remaining, the field wanted desperately to race to the finish.

But it had trouble getting momentum going, with five more cautions before the end of the race.

Right off the restart, Tony Raines and John Andretti wrecked on the backstretch, resulting in a nine-lap caution period and a five-minute red flag to clean things up.

Just two laps later, a disappointing day came to an end for Kenseth.

He started driving away from the field just before the 100-mile mark, taking the lead at lap 98 and running up front for the next 169 laps.

But around lap 147, Kenseth developed alternator problems, and it ended up being the least of his concerns.

As the race went on, Kenseth lost a cylinder, and the engine finally blew up with 25 laps to go.

It was the first time since February of 2005 that Kenseth had experienced engine failure.

"Some things you just can't do much about," Kenseth said. "I don't have a bad word to say about Roush-Yates engines. They've won more races for me than they could ever lose. They do a great job and gave me a lot more power."

"We had a great battle with Matt [Kenseth], and I hated to see him lose an engine," Edwards said. "He would have easily been first or second today."

As soon as the track was cleaned up from Kenseth's failure, Robby Gordon wrecked coming off turn two.

Then with 14 laps to go, Kurt Busch lost his car coming off turn 2, hit the outside wall and started a 10-car melee that collected teammate Ryan Newman, along with Truex, Kasey Kahne, Scott Riggs, J.J. Yeley, Reed Sorensen, Bobby Labonte, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Green.

A second red flag came out for nearly 12 minutes while crews cleaned up the track.

"I just caught the fence in turn two and it collected so many top cars, and everybody for that matter," Busch said. "It's tough when everybody puts a lot of hard work into building these cars and you just have one little problem like that take out a lot of cars."

The leaders finally got to make their final run for the last four laps. Biffle was able to leap past Martin off the restart, allowing him to set his sights on Edwards.

"I really had a great opportunity at the end when we put tires on," Biffle said. "I was inside of Mark Martin when the caution came out, and if I'd been in front of him when the caution came out I might have had a chance to get inside Carl on the restart. But it was a pretty good run for us. Our car wasn't that great early, but we kept working on it and made some tire pressure adjustments and wedge and got it pretty good. We hadn't had a good run like this all season."

Meanwhile, Earnhardt was able to catch Martin to finish third.

"We had a good car at the start of the race, we marched into the top 10 and thought we'd be able to run hard there all day, and we did," Earnhardt said. "The car was up and down. It seemed like everybody was having trouble getting some consistency on their tires. I was way too tight at the end of the race to make runs at those guys. We should have finished about eighth and we got third, so I'll take it."

Wanting to finish the race if at all possible, Truex taped his car up and went back out after being gobbled up in the big wreck.

But sheet metal rubbing against the tire caused a blowout and the 13th and final caution for debris on the track.

Truex came back in and his crew replaced the tire, applied some more tape and sent him back out with his radiator, which was crippled before, now completely disabled.

He was running around the apron of the track, billowing white smoke, when Edwards took the checkered flag.

"It was just one of those deals," Truex said. "It's frustrating anytime it happens. But that late in the race, it really sucks, when you're sitting there with 15 laps to go and you can smell a top five, and we would have been really happy with that. We hung in there. The bad luck bit us today."

The Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup took on a very close and tight look, with the top four drivers separated by a total of four points.

Jeff Gordon jumped into the lead and is two points ahead of Tony Stewart, three ahead of Edwards, and four ahead of Jimmie Johnson.

Kyle Busch remained in fifth but closed to within ten points, while Clint Bowyer dropped to sixth but only lost three points, going from 15 back to 18 back.

Martin Truex Jr. is seventh, Jeff Burton jumped from 11th to eighth, Kevin Harvick leapt a spot to ninth, Matt Kenseth is 10th, Kurt Busch 11th and Denny Hamlin dropped from ninth to 12th.

"It was certainly very eventful," Gordon said of his day. "In typical Dover fashion for us, we took off and the car was awesome, and then it just went downhill from there. We got real lose and just fought it. It wasn't pretty, but it was effective because we survived and came out 11th. To me that's what this race is all about, is survival. We didn't have the car we were hoping for today, but we fought through to a decent finish and missed some accidents. It was a crazy Dover day, and somehow we came out of it with the points lead."

Rookie A.J. Allmendinger had a frustrating weekend continue when he blew his second engine in two days on the start of the race.

Allmendinger missed the entire practice on Friday because of a blown engine, but managed to replace everything and qualify 11th later that day.

"Either it did the same thing it did in practice or it jumped back out of gear and slammed itself, or I missed a shift," Allmendinger said. "That one happened so quick I'm not sure."

The win marked the 100th victory for Roush Fenway Racing since Jack Roush started his career as a car owner with Ford Racing in 1988.

Carl Edwards's No. 99 Office Depot Ford failed NASCAR's post-race inspection, leaving the results of the Dodge Dealers 400 and the current Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings in limbo until NASCAR has a chance to inspect the car this week.

NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said after the race that the car failed the post-race height inspection.

"The car was found to be too low in the right rear," Poston said. "The heights exceeded NASCAR's tolerances, which are a half-inch. This is not a COT-type penalty, in that there's no evidence of manipulation of the structure of the car."

Poston said NASCAR would take the car back to their research & development center in Concord, NC and inspect it further this week. Officials will then decide on what penalties, if any, to issue. He would not say if the race win was in jeopardy.

"We always like to go back to Daytona and have a couple days separation," Poston said. "The results are still unofficial as of right now. We'll go back to Daytona and then on to Concord and then announce a penalty early next week."

Story by: Brian Smith

Courtesy: doverspeedway.com

Who the HELL watches NASCAR when the NFL is on!! Have another beer you sick hicks!!!

Hamlin should have knocked out that old, slow, worthless Kyle Petty.

Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson are bigger cheaters than Carl Edwards. Spin the 24!!!!

Mr. Edwards isn't that kinda guy.

Another cheater caught!!

Adding comments to these stories has been disabled. View the current sports stories Salem-News Sports