DEI driver Martin Truex Jr. scored his first NASCAR Nextel Cup win today in teh rain delayed race at Dover. Truex lead for 216 of the 400 laps with his only real challange coming from pole sitter Ryan Newman.

Towards the close of the race reigning champion Jimmie Johnson looked like he might keep the run of  Hendricks Motorsport “Car of Tomorrow” race victories intact, but had to pit with just 20 laps left for a cut tire and eventually finished 15th. Fellow CoT winner and Hendrick team mate, Jeff Gordon just scraped a top 10 finish.

The only major excitemnt of the day was a clash between Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch on lap 270 when the two ended up contesting the same piece of track. The incident spilled over into pit lane with Busch brake checking by Stewart’s pit forcing a member of Stewart’s crew to jump out of the way.  As a result the NASCAR officials refused to let Busch continue the race.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1. Martin Truex Jr.
2. Ryan Newman
3. Carl Edwards
4. Denny Hamlin
5. Matt Kenseth
6. Greg Biffle
7. Mark Martin
8. Clint Boyer
9. Jeff Gordon
10. Robby Gordon

Bill France Jr.

The race however was overshadowed by the news of the death of NASCAR vice-chairman Bill France Jr.  France Jr, son of the series founder, is widely regarded as the man who propelled NASCAR from being a regional series to its current media prominence. France Jr, ran NASCAR from 1972 to 2000 when he stepped aside after being diagnosed with cancer. Despite his seven year battle against the disease his death was still something of a shock to the NASCAR community.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 1:42 am and is filed under NASCAR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.