The good, the bad and the ugly from Sunday's FedEx 400 at Dover

The Cool Down Lap

The good, the bad and the ugly from Sunday's FedEx 400 at Dover

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

(May 16, 2011)

DOVER, Del.—Sunday's FedEx 400 at Dover International Speedway produced an unusual assortment of excellent strategy, formidable performance and abject failure.

In other words, as it usually does, the Monster Mile brought out the best and worst from Sprint Cup drivers and their teams. Here are the highlights and lowlights:

Good: The spur-of-the-moment collaboration between Matt Kenseth and crew chief Jimmy Fennig that produced the race-winning two-tire call. "Are you sure you don't want to try two?" Kenseth suggested while the car was on the jack during the final pit stop on Lap 363. Fennig immediately concurred, and Kenseth was out of the pits and on the front row for the restart with 34 laps left. Two tires won the race.

Bad: Four tires lost the race for Jimmie Johnson. Starting from the pole under the new rule that awards the top spot to the fastest car in practice in the event of a qualifying rainout, Johnson also had the benefit of pit stall No. 1, the box closest to the exit of pit road. Johnson said he was surprised at the number of cars that took two tires. He shouldn't have been. With a spotter on the roof and the other lead-lap cars pitting behind Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus should have had enough information to make the right call—two tires—by the time Johnson reached his pit box.

Ugly: The performance of Tony Stewart's No. 14 Murphy's Law Chevrolet. It started with an early pit stop where the gas can failed to connect with the fuel hookup. Stewart had to return to pit road under green and lost three laps in the process. For the rest of the afternoon, he battled an impossibly tight racecar and finished 29th, six laps down. Stewart slipped three spots to 10th in the Cup standings.

Good: Crew chief Lance McGrew's decision to keep Mark Martin on the track under the final caution. Martin was running 14th, one of the tail-enders on the lead lap when the final caution flew on Lap 362. On his last stop, Martin had lost time and positions by sliding through his pit box. So why pit? The strategy paid off with a second-place finish and a three-position rise to 11th in the standings, four points behind Stewart.

Bad: The luck of Greg Biffle, who lost a lap early, thanks to a carburetor linkage problem, and never got it back. Biffle had one of the fastest cars on the track, but he was never in position to regain his lap through a free pass as the highest-scored lapped car. Why? Because long green-flag runs kept putting other cars ahead of Biffle in the queue for the "lucky dog." As a result, Biffle finished 19th at one of his best racetracks and failed to crack the top 10 in points. He remains 12th.

Ugly: The engine failures that eliminated two strong cars. First was the Ford of AJ Allmendinger, who started on the front row next to Johnson and was running in the top five when his engine began to give up the ghost before rain slowed the race on Lap 163. Allmendinger finished 37th and dropped five positions to 16th in points. Kasey Kahne's engine failure wasn't quite as costly, but it stalled a promising run late in the race. On Lap 332, Kahne's Toyota came to a stop near the Turn 2 wall. Instead of gaining in the standings with a top-10 run, Kahne finished 36th and dropped three spots to 18th. Neither he nor Allmendinger can afford any more failures if they hope to qualify for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.