Jarrett and his team felt good about their chances in Sunday's Pennsylvania 500. The #44 UPS team brought a car that had seen limited track time, but one that they felt would be a strong contender if they could get through qualifying. Jarrett did get through qualifying and showed the strength of his car by running as high as 3rd at one point in the race. He was running 26th when the car's fuel pump malfunctioned midway through the 200-lap race and relegated him back into a disappointing 42nd-place finish.
Sunday's race began extremely well for Dale Jarrett. He took the green flag on the outside of row 20 in the 40th position. Immediately Jarrett showed the strength of his #44 UPS Toyota Camry. As lap after lap ticked away, he continued to run down more and more competitors to work his way up near the top-20 by lap 64 when the caution flag waved. Up to that point Jarrett felt the car was strong but just a little tight on the exit of each corner.
Although the car was a little tight it was also very fast. After a small air pressure adjustment under caution, Jarrett picked up more spots to climb up the leader board. While the field made green-flag pit stops near the halfway point of the race, Jarrett worked his way as high as 3rd place before being forced to make his own pit stop for fuel. When the green-flag pit stops cycled through, Jarrett was in 26th and ready to continue his assault on the rest of the field. However, only two laps later Jarrett radioed into his crew that he completely lost fuel pressure.
Jarrett coasted back to pit road where his team tried to quickly analyze the situation. The crew lifted the hood briefly but decided to push the car back into the garage. After further diagnosis the crew found the problem to be a total malfunction in the fuel pump system. They fixed the problem and sent Jarrett back on the track. Due to being several laps down, the guys treated the rest of the race essentially as extra practice time to try new changes to the handling. Once they reached the number of laps where they could not gain or lose anymore positions, they chose to park the car and save the car for Michigan. Jarrett finished the day 49 laps down to the leaders in the 42nd position.
"We had a good car," Jarrett said. "I knew if we ever got this race car in a race we would be able to show that it was fast. We obviously had some trouble getting it fast enough to make a couple of races, but I knew by the feel of the car and the down force that it seemed to have, that it had the potential to be a real good car. It proved today that it was a good car; we passed a lot of cars. We had good pit stops and unfortunately, just past halfway, we had a fuel pump problem. That ruined our day, but we know what caused it and we fixed that. It was somewhat encouraging to go out, run and pass some race cars. We still have some work to do, but that was a definite improvement."
Jarrett's teammates both struggled through long days of their own. Reutimann in the #00 Toyota experienced the same fuel pump malfunction as Jarrett and finished 41st. Waltrip had major problems with his left front tire going flat during several runs and limped home in 38th.
Kurt Busch dominated the field all day long to pick up his first victory of the 2007 season, with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. following a close second. Denny Hamlin held off a hard-charging Jeff Gordon for third place, with Gordon picking up fourth and his teammate, Jimmie Johnson, picking up the fifth spot.
Teams will travel back to the northeast to Watkins Glen International for their second and final road course race of the season. Television coverage on ESPN will begin at 1:00 p.m. EDT with the green flag scheduled to wave at 2:00 p.m. Radio coverage of the race will be provided by the Motor Racing Network (MRN).
