Dover, DE (June 1, 2008) Paul Menard survived an early scare in Sunday's Best Buy 400 to post a 22nd-place finish at Dover Downs Speedway.
Menard started the race from inside the seventh row after a career-best qualifying effort of 13th on Saturday. Out of the gates, the #15 Menards Chevrolet was decent as Menard lingered in the top 15 to 20 cars. But on lap 17, the race took a major turn.
Heading onto the backstretch, Elliott Sadler was hit and spun into the outside wall, spinning back into the path of Tony Stewart. The two collided in front of a host of others and the track became littered with crashing race cars. Menard was right in the middle of the mess, but thanks to some nifty driving was able to dodge the big bullets and only tap the inside wall with the right rear of his car. Damage was sustained, but for the most part only cosmetic and Menard was able to return to racing on the lead lap.
For his efforts, Menard was awarded the Allstate Good Hands Move of the Day and a bigger than normal dry cleaning bill for his firesuit this week.
While Menard's damage was "cosmetic", it took numerous stops under the lengthy caution to patch up the wrinkled fender and decklid with vinyl decal material. Menard, as mentioned, did stay on the lead lap and returned to green flag action 31st.
Through the next 125 laps, Menard had gone a lap down, had a tight car and asked crew chief Doug Randolph for more help getting off the corners, which he did get to some extent on a lap 154 pit stop. The bigger help, however, was in Randolph's fuel strategy. Randolph kept Menard on the track while all the other competitors pit under green. So, Menard who was 24th and a lap down at the time, caught a huge break as caution came out just before his turn to pit. The move gave him his lap back and he would restart on lap 156 in 13th position.
As the race wore on the field began to spread out. Menard remained in the top-15, going a lap down again on lap 225. Prior to a stop on lap 237, Menard asked to free up the car a little bit going one up on the trackbar, but it proved to be "too many up" as Menard's Impala became extremely loose.
For the next 50 laps Menard had to deal with the loose car and eventually lost another lap, but still maintained a decent position, holding onto 16th as the race entered it's last 100 laps.
In the end, Menard began to experience some motor issues and dropped down to 22nd where he ultimately finished.
"Dover is kind of like my Talladega, I just never know what is going to happen to me here," said Menard. "After qualifying I had pretty high hopes of good things, and really, all things considered it wasn't a terrible race, but it's just one of those tracks for me.
"With that deal on the backstretch, it all happened so fast for everyone and in a part of the track where everyone is spooling up off that corner. Next thing you know there's smoke everywhere (no pun intended) and you just react. We grazed the inside wall after I got through it somehow and that hurt us a little, but not as bad as a lot of guys I guess. We tried to loosen the car up later in the race and went too far. That hurt us more than anything, but that could also have been because of something from hitting the wall earlier. Who knows."
Next week NASCAR and the Sprint Cup Series visit Pocono Raceway for the 14th event on the 36 race schedule.
