DOVER, Del. — Chase Elliott scored his first NASCAR Cup Series victory of the season at Dover Motor Speedway in the DuraMAX Drydene 400, giving the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team its second victory at the Monster Mile.
The race was stopped because of rain after 71 laps on Sunday and resumed shortly after noon on Monday.
Elliott fought side-by-side with last week’s Talladega race winner Ross Chastain after the final restart with 53 laps to go, and once he got around the No. 1 Chevrolet, Elliott never looked back.
It was Elliott’s 14th career victory and first victory on an oval since the 2020 championship race at Phoenix Raceway.
“Yeah, just had some good circumstances finally,” Elliott said. “(I) just really appreciate Alan (Gustafson) and our entire team for just sticking with it. We’ve had some tough races over the last, I don’t know, four-five months. (It’s) just great to get NAPA back to victory lane, great to get Hendrick Motorsports back to victory lane. (I’m) just so proud, this one means a lot in a lot of different ways.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who came into the race at the concrete mile track ranked 31st in points, rallied from his 15th-place qualifying effort to bring home the No. 47 JTG Daughtery Racing Chevrolet home in the runner-up position.
“It’s been a rough start to the season,” Stenhouse said. “Our short-track program’s been off and then all of our other good races that we’ve had good runs going, something’s always happened. (It’s) really good to put this all together, we had a brand-new partner in the Frozen Farmer, they’re from 40 minutes down the road, so their whole family’s here. So, it was a really great day for us.”
Behind the front two on the final lap, was a scuffle between Martin Truex Jr. and Ross Chastain, as the duo battled for third. Chastain, a two-time winner for Trackhouse Racing this season, blocked Truex’s Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the middle of the backstretch, sending Truex spinning.
The race ended under caution, as Truex Jr. limped home in 12th position.
Chastain’s third-place effort completed a sweep of the top-three positions for Chevrolet drivers.
“Oh, we were talking about where we were going to go fishing next week,” Chastain said, when asked about his conversation with Truex following the race. “Super proud of this effort, I thought we were a fifth-place car, and a couple guys had misfortune with the caution coming out, and that cycled us to the lead. (The) pit crew was incredible today, they were just picking up spots every stop and got us the lead. I’m racing with champions, and I got beat.”
‘Miles The Monster’ Made His Mark
The relentless concrete surface in Dover chewed away at the NextGen car throughout the race, including multiple shredded tires, and costly spins for contenders.
The first casualty came on lap 88, when Team Penske’s Austin Cindric slid up the track in turn three and tapped the rear of the car into the outside wall. The Daytona 500 winner would eventually go behind the wall after going over the six-minute allotted time on pit road to fix the damage.
Denny Hamlin’s day began stout, leading 67 laps and winning stage one. However, after coming on pit road, his pit crew wasn’t able to get the single lug on the left front tire on tight, sending the tire flying out from underneath the No. 11 Camry. Hamlin served a penalty and was later collected in a wreck when Cody Ware spun on lap 242.
Hamlin finished 21st, one lap down.
Fellow Toyota driver Kurt Busch would encounter trouble on lap 189, after getting help from A.J. Allmendinger out of turn two, sending the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota down the backstretch slope into the wall. Busch wound up 31st.
2018 NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano brought out the caution on lap 196 after left-side door contact with the No. 43 of Erik Jones sent the No. 22 Ford spinning in turn one.
Tyler Reddick and Ty Dillon gambled after the Logano spin and chose to stay out on the ensuing restart. However, the two Chevrolet drivers wound up with shredded right front tires a handful of laps after the green flag was waved again on lap 201.
In a similar situation to Hamlin’s, Kaulig Racing’s A.J. Allmendinger lost a tire coming out of the pits during green flag pit stops with 76 laps to go, sending a lone, bouncing tire down the backstretch.
Daniel Suárez ran into trouble with 66 laps to go, after colliding with Corey Lajoie, sending the No. 99 Chevrolet around. Suárez would recover to finish 14th.
The final caution flag of the day came when Tyler Reddick made contact with the inside wall.
Kyle Busch and Alex Bowman had just made their final pit stops on lap 323 when the yellow flag waved for debris on lap 325, putting both at the rear of the field for the restart.
Busch, who had led 103 of the 400 laps on his birthday, wound up seventh, while Bowman finished fifth.