Erik Jones wins Xfinity race at Dover for $100,000 bonus
DOVER, Del. (AP) - Erik Jones won the Xfinity Series race Saturday at Dover International Speedway and took a $100,000 bonus from the series' Dash-4-Cash program.
Four drivers were eligible for the bonus Saturday, and Jones won it for the second time this season. There's one more Dash-4-Cash race, at Indianapolis this summer.
Jones led a race-high 76 laps in his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and he was cruising to the win until a caution came out with 11 laps remaining because Brendan Gaughan spun. The yellow flag ate up Jones' lead over Alex Bowman, who pitted under the caution for four tires.
Jones did not pit and admitted he was worried about the strategy.
"At first I couldn't see how many came to pit road, I was a little anxious to see how many came and how many stayed out," he said. "Fortunately enough stayed out to make it viable for us to win."
Jones was the leader on the restart with five to go, and Bowman was fourth. But Jones got a nice push from Darrell Wallace Jr. that allowed him to break free of the pack. Jones later thanked Wallace for the push.
"You're welcome for that restart, Erik," Wallace said as Jones was doing a celebratory burnout.
Jones didn't stress when the caution came out and instead just tried to focus on winning the race.
"It's not the first time it's happened to me, unfortunately," Jones said of the late flag. "If I remember the first time, I was pretty upset and this time I was pretty calm and collected and wasn't too worried about it. I knew we had a good car and knew that as long as we got a decent restart, we would be able to hold it off.
"Enough guys stayed out on old tires with us that we were in a good spot and it all worked out."
Wallace had also pitted under the caution, and in a backup car for Roush Fenway Racing, finished a career-best second.
"We were kind of in the cat-bird seat, wishing Erik would mess up," said Wallace, who still considered the runner-up finish fulfilling.
Bowman, in his first race of the year, led 33 laps before finishing third. He knew he wasn't going to catch Jones once the caution came out, so the pit stop for new tires was strategic by his JR Motorsports team.
"We didn't have the short run speed we needed," Bowman said. "We put four tires on at the end trying to win the thing rather than settle for second."
Justin Allgaier finished fourth to give JR Motorsports two cars in the top four. Ty Dillon was fifth and Elliott Sadler sixth in another JRM Chevrolet.
Joey Logano, the only full-time Sprint Cup Series driver in the race, finished seventh.
"We just weren't fast today. Straight up," Logano said. "We may have missed at the beginning part of the race and made some adjustments to get better but, gosh, we were just slow. There is no good answer behind it. We could have lucked into a second-place finish if we were fourth instead of third on that last restart because the inside lane doesn't go. That would have been a lucky second though and not representative if what we had out there."