Matt Kenseth held off a late charge from Kyle Larson on Sunday afternoon at Dover International Speedway to claim his first victory of the season, capping Toyota’s weekend sweep of all three races at “The Monster Mile”. Matt Crafton won Friday’s Camping World Truck Series race and Erik Jones followed with a victory in Saturday’s X-FINITY Series event.
Kenseth led the final 47 laps on Sunday, nipping Larson at the checkered flag by eighteen one-hundredths of a second. It’s his 37th career victory and 3rd at Dover. Kenseth’s last Cup Series win had come in New Hampshire last fall, 20 races ago. He started 10th on Sunday and led briefly during the first half of the race before taking control down the stretch.
The race was red-flagged for more than 11 minutes after Jimmie Johnson’s transmission failure triggered an 18-car accident along the frontstretch less than 50 laps from the finish. Johnson, at the front of the field on a restart, could not get his car into 3rd gear and up to speed. Martin Truex, Jr. drove into the rear of Johnson’s Chevrolet and the contact sent cars spinning across the track. Attrition left just 14 cars running on the lead lap at the finish, a season low in the Sprint Cup Series.
Larson led 85 laps en route to his 2nd-place finish. Rookie Chase Elliott ran 3rd with Kasey Kahne and Kurt Busch completing the top five. Pole sitter Kevin Harvick led a race-high 117 laps, all in the first half, before fading to 15th place – enough to keep him atop the regular-season point standings.
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– story by John Singler
www.mrn.com
Concord, NC
