By Gary Buchanan
On the second and final green-white-checkers restart, Carl Edwards driver of the #60 Fastenal Ford was the leader and Joey Logano restarted in the high line in second.
Exiting turn four, both driver got loose and it appeared that Edwards touched the rear of Logano’s #20 GameStop Toyota sending him hard into the outside wall, triggering a multi-car crash on the final lap.
The race finished under caution flag conditions with Edwards winning Saturday’s 5-Hour Energy 200 at Dover International Speedway. This was Edwards’ third of the season and the 32nd of his career.
Edwards refrained from performing his traditional winning backflip off of his car because he thought he had wrecked Logano.
“I saw him wiggle and I wasn’t sure if I touched him or not. Not the way we wanted to finish the race.” Edwards said after exiting his car in victory lane.
After seeing the replay, Edwards was glad that he didn’t touch Logano.
“They just showed the replay and I didn’t touch them, so I am happy for that. What a wild finish. I apologize for not doing the back flip there guys. I thought that I wrecked them and I didn’t want to be celebrating over that but it looks like we didn’t hit them, we won the race in our fast Ford Mustang and that is good. My guys did a great job on pit road.” Edwards said.
“It just seemed like I either got tagged or I think just Carl coming up took the air off me enough to make me loose. I just think (watching a replay of the accident), see I think he’s coming up the track. Those shark fins they got them. You get a car underneath you right about that point you feel the car starting to get loose. It’s unfortunate man.” Logano said.
Clint Bowyer ran up Logano’s car on the drivers side, sending him airborne. Bowyer flipped onto his side and slid down the track into the inside wall. Mike Bliss and Steve Wallace also slammed hard into the inside wall and into Bowyer.
Brad Keselowski clipped the back of Logano’s spinning car, sending him into in inside wall.
“We had a decent day going, just didn’t finish it off. That’s unfortunate for our Ruby Tuesday Dodge team. I think the 60 ran over the 20 and then all hell kind of broke loose from there.” twelfth place finisher Keselowski said.
Everyone involved was check out a released from the infield care center. Also a crew member was reputably injured from debris.
Kyle Busch failed on his attempt to tie Mark Martin for the career Nationwide wins lead at 49. Busch was also caught up in the final lap crash but managed to finish second with a heavily damaged car.
“I didn’t really want that kind of view. It’s going to take an awful lot of MAC Tools and Stanley Tools to beat the front end out of this thing. Luckily, we just cut it off and start over. It was a long day for us. We didn’t quite have the car we needed today, unfortunately this weekend. We kept working on it, trying to make it the best we could. The nose damage we had from earlier in the race coming to pit road just killed it.”
Reed Sorenson finished third, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. fourth and David Reutimann finished fifth.
“It is really frustrating. We are fast every run, every practice, every first run of the race and all of a sudden our Mustang gets really, really loose. I don’t know if it is something we are doing every week that might get it free but that first run I didn’t want to have any too big of complaints but our Mississippi Flood Relief Ford was really loose. We made big changes on pit stops that seemed to make it better, but I guess not as good as it needs to be.” Stenhouse Jr. said.
Elliott Sadler finished sixth and now holds a 10 point lead over Reed Sorenson in the series standings.
The series heads to Iowa Speedway next Sunday at 2 pm for the John Deere Dealers 250 presented by Pioneer.
Unofficial Race Results
5-Hour Energy 200, Dover International Speedway
May 14, 2011 – Race 11 of 35
====================================
Pos. Driver
====================================
1 Carl Edwards
2 Kyle Busch
3 Reed Sorenson
4 Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
5 David Reutimann
6 Elliott Sadler
7 Kenny Wallace
8 James Buescher
9 Aric Almirola
10 Mike Wallace
11 Jason Leffler
12 Brad Keselowski
13 Joey Logano
14 Clint Bowyer
15 Mike Bliss
16 Steve Wallace
17 Josh Wise
18 Ryan Truex *
19 Joe Nemechek
20 Michael Annett
21 J.R. Fitzpatrick
22 Timmy Hill *
23 Danny Efland
24 Jeremy Clements
25 Eric McClure
26 Morgan Shepherd
27 Derrike Cope
28 Dennis Setzer
29 Justin Allgaier
30 Brian Scott
31 Tim George Jr.
32 Alex Kennedy
33 Donnie Neuenberger
34 Carl Long
35 Scott Wimmer
36 Tim Andrews
37 Jennifer Jo Cobb *
38 Kevin Lepage
39 Brad Teague
40 Brett Rowe
41 Jeff Green
42 Charles Lewandoski *
43 Blake Koch *
