Dale Jarrett and the #88 UPS Racing Team knew they were facing an uphill battle in the Neighborhood Excellence 400 at Dover International Speedway after having to start from the 40th position due to problems during qualifying. With track position being critical at Dover, the team made the most of a combination of teamwork and driver patience to walk away from Dover with a 24th-place finish.
The team worked on the car during the two practice sessions on Saturday, making visible improvements to the UPS Ford Fusion and finding a little speed in the car.
It was rough going during the early stages of the 400-mile event as Jarrett found himself down a lap by lap 35. The first caution waved at the same time the UPS Ford went down a lap, therefore awarding Jarrett the free pass back to the lead lap. Adjustments made to the car improved the handling to the point where Jarrett was able to make passes, and he moved into the top 30 by lap 91. A blistering pace set by the leaders, however, placed the UPS Ford back down one lap while Jarrett was running in 22nd place on lap 263. The torrid pace set by the lead lap cars, however, found more than half the field down a lap by the 300-lap mark of the event.
"Probably about halfway, Jason (Burdett, interim crew chief) and the guys made an adjustment that allowed me to really get up on the wheel early in a run," Jarrett said. "But the longer the run went, the more the nose of the car started to slide. I just couldn't get down in that bottom groove to pass cars, and so I had to make most of my passes on the outside. But the finish is a definite improvement from where we started."
Elliott Sadler and the #38 M&M'S® Chocolate Candies Team started the race from the eighth position and had charged to the top five within the first 35 laps. Sometime after the second caution on lap 114, however, a loose tire forced Sadler to make an unscheduled green-flag pit stop, dropping the M&M'S Ford two laps down to the leaders. Long, green-flag runs prevented Sadler from making up many of the positions he lost and around lap 30, spun as a result of driving through the oil another car dropped. Sadler made hard contact with the outside wall and retired from the race with a 40th place finish.
Matt Kenseth scored a hard-fought victory. It is the second win of the 2006 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series season for Kenseth. As a result of the win, Kenseth is now 74 points behind point leader Jimmie Johnson who rebounded from a 42nd-place finish, a lap down to come back and finish the event in sixth.
Jarrett dropped one position in the point standings and is now 17th. Sadler dropped three positions in the point standings and now sits at 20th.
The NEXTEL Cup Series travels to the unique Pocono Raceway for next weekend's Pocono 500. FOX will provide live flag-to-flag coverage of the Pocono 500 beginning next Sunday, June 11th at 1:30 p.m. EDT, with the green flag on the event scheduled to drop 30 minutes later at 2 p.m. EDT.
