Chase Elliott wins at Dover, Hendrick Domination Continues

NASCAR made its lone trip to Dover Motor Speedway for the DuraMAX Drydene 400, where the race started on Sunday but was halted due to weather and continued on Monday. Chase Elliott joins all three of his teammates who have been to victory lane in 2022, as the 2020 Cup Champion took the checkered flag after leading the final 53 laps. Elliott had two wins in 2021, both on road courses at Circuit of the Americas and Road America. Elliott’s last oval win was the 2020 season finale, where he clinched his first Cup Series Championship.

“Just had some good circumstances finally,” Elliott said in his post-race interview. “Just really appreciate Alan and our entire team for just sticking with it. We had some tough races over the last four or five months and just great to get NAPA back to Victory Lane and great to get Hendrick Motorsports in Victory Lane. So proud. This means a lot in a lot of different ways. Just appreciate all the effort.’’

While that was going on, there was an incident on the final lap between Martin Truex Jr and Ross Chastain, as both drivers looked to be competing against each other for the entire race. Both drivers made contact on the final lap, sending Truex’s No. 19 Toyota Camry spinning, causing him to finish in 12th. Both drivers did exchange words at the conclusion of the race. Ross Chastain’s response after they both talked was very short and simple, as he said, “We were talking about where we were going fishing next week.’’

Ricky Stenhouse Jr earned a runner-up finish in his No. 47 JTG Daughtry Racing Chevrolet. It was a much-needed result for a team that has had a struggling start to the season. This marked only his second top 10 finish of the season, his second top 20 finish of the season, and his best finish since finishing second in the Bristol Dirt Race in 2021.

“It’s been a rough start to the season,” Stenhouse said after the race, “Our short-track program has been off and then all of our races where we’ve had good runs going, something’s always happen so, really good to put this all together.”

“I felt like we had a car capable of winning, obviously getting off pit road at different times, but the pit crew did a great job keeping us up front all day and this feels good. I hope we can carry this momentum on the big tracks, the tracks we got coming forward are really good tracks for us. That was a lot of fun, a lot of battling, it’s tough to pass, but it was fun running through lapped traffic and I wish we had like a 70 lap run to end there but all and all our Kroger team is doing a great job and looking forward to carry that momentum on.”

Ross Chastain would finish third, and Christopher Bell finished fourth in his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Camry. Alex Bowman, last year’s winner, finished fifth with teammate Kyle Larson in sixth, and Kyle Busch, who led the most laps with 103, finished seventh. Pole-sitter Chris Buescher had a strong showing for RFK Racing as he finished eighth for his third top ten this season, then Kevin Harvick and Erik Jones rounded out the top 10. Chase Elliott now has a 50-point lead over Ryan Blaney after Dover.

The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Darlington Raceway next for its throwback week, scheduled for Sunday May 8th at 3:30 PM EST on FS1, MRN, and SiriusXM. Martin Truex Jr is the defending race winner of the Goodyear 400.