The late laps at Dover did not go in Joe Gibbs Racing’s favor
Joe Gibbs Racing was looking good entering the final third of Sunday’s race at Dover. We won’t go as far as to say the team was heading to victory lane for the third-straight week, but it wasn’t out of the question.
Instead, after a myriad of events, mostly unrelated, the team’s drivers finished 19th, 21st, 36th and 39th. Let’s start from the top.
Carl Edwards, 19th: The Coca-Cola 600 winner had two pit road penalties. The first, for equipment leaving the pit box, wasn’t too severe. A sleeve for the wedge wrench stayed in the car after a crew member removed it and Edwards drove off with it still attached to his back windshield. The infraction happened under green, but a caution came out afterwards. Because Edwards was able to serve the penalty under yellow, he simply had to start at the end of the longest line on the restart rather than make a pass-through penalty on pit road under green.
The second penalty was a pass-through. After recovering from the first penalty, Edwards sped on pit road under green and there was no caution to save him. He ended up three laps down.
Denny Hamlin, 21st: The Sprint All-Star Race winner led 118 laps and was near the front of the field in the late laps. He took four tires before a lap 384 restart and had a chance to race for the win.
Instead, he crashed. Hamlin didn’t get a good run on the leaders and was battling with Clint Bowyer for position when Bowyer got into the back of him exiting turn two. This ensued:
Hamlin was able to limp his car back to pit road and finished three laps down too.
Kyle Busch, 36th: Busch was running as high as third when he was collected in a crash with Brian Scott on lap 375. Busch was moving to lap Scott and said Scott told him he wasn’t notified by his spotter that Busch was in the position to make a pass. The two slid up the track and into the wall.
While Busch had a slight chance to win, the crash hurts him more in the points standings — he needs to first make sure he can make the top 30 before he can get into the Chase with a win. He said he felt fine after the accident, his first after returning to the Cup Series following his broken leg and foot at Daytona.
Matt Kenseth, 39th: With less than 100 laps to go, Kenseth said he felt something amiss with the car. The team changed four tires to see if it’d fix the issue. If it did, Kenseth would be able to make it the rest of the way on gas and possibly steal a decent finish.
It did not. Kenseth had a broken front suspension and his day was over. After starting fourth and running around the top 10 for most of the day, he ended the day behind the wall.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
