Mears runs lean to maiden Cup win

Mears was expecting a late caution to be able to get to the end of the race without stopping for fuel as most of his rivals did, but despite the yellow flags not coming out, his gamble of staying on the track paid off in the end.

"Definitely a team win," said Mears after giving Hendrick Motorsports their ninth win of the season. "We had a third, fourth, fifth place car and there was no way we were going to win. We tried to stay out and I saved fuel the best I could."

Mears led only the last six laps of what was his 156th race in the Nextel Cup. He was running in the top five in the end whe his crew chief Darian Grubb made the crucial decision on the pit wall to switch from their initial plan to pit for fuel, to an economy run to the chequered flag.

"At first we were going to do a splash and go, and there at the end we thought that we were kind of falling off," Mears added. "Since we were not going to be competitive enough to win on our own, we just thought we must try to do it by fuel mileage.

"I started following Darian's plan, I saved a bunch of fuel and ran out [of it] on the backstretch. Awesome day."

Mears' car featured a special camouflaged paint scheme during the race due to the Memorial weekend in the US. He dedicated his win to the soldiers of his car's sponsor, the National Guard.

JJ Yeley finished second running the same strategy as Mears as did Kyle Petty, who finished a popular third - his best result of the season to date - driving the #45 Coke Zero Dodge. Reed Sorenson also gambled on fuel and succeeded in finishing fourth to claim Chip Ganassi's best result of the year thus far.

Brian Vickers finished a strong fifth for Red Bull but was probably left hoping for more as he comfortably led the race for 76 laps. Power steering problems and a subsequent brush with the wall hit his Toyota with 64 laps to go.

However, Vickers claimed Toyota and Red Bull's best result of their short career in the Nextel Cup. It was only the sixth time that the 23-year-old was starting a race this year as he has been forced to qualify for all of them on speed.

Tony Stewart crossed the line sixth, pitting from the lead for fuel with just a handful of laps remaining. Ricky Rudd finished seventh, ahead of Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr and Jimmie Johnson, who was again a main contender for victory.

The reigning Nextel Cup champion incredibly came out clean from the biggest crash of the day which unfolded around his car in the early stages of the race, involving thirteen cars, but amazingly not his.

On lap 53 Johnson was running on the outside of AJ Allmendinger, who was already losing a lap to the leader, when the Red Bull driver got loose going out of turn 2 and hit the right rear of the Lowe's car.

"We were trying to race to get back on the lead lap with the guys that were right ahead of me," said an apologetic Allmendinger. "Jimmie was on the outside of me and I just got loose. I apologized as much as I could to my spotter to tell his spotter because I just got loose and got into him.

"Just a mistake. Luckily it kept him in the race still and it didn't take us [both] out," he added.

As Johnson left turn four, his right rear tyre delaminated after being cut in the impact with Allmendinger's car. The reigning Nextel Cup champion inevitably slowed down and chaos started behind him when Tony Stewart was tapped from behind by Dave Blaney, after the former lifted to avoid colliding with Johnson.

Thirteen drivers were involved in the incident sustaining some kind of damage to their cars, including Juan Pablo Montoya who was forced to go to the garage to replace the radiator on his car and get further repairs to the front bodywork of his Dodge.

"All I saw was the tyre flying," Montoya said. "The tyre was flying and as soon as I saw the tyre off I checked-up at the start finish line. I managed to slow down my car but I just got pushed from behind into the #9 car and that was it."

The Colombian later rejoined to get some valuable mileage and he even had time to ask his team on the radio about the results of the Indy 500 which he won seven years ago. He eventually finished 28th, 31 laps down on the winner.

The multi-car wreck was followed by another major crash on the next restart 14 laps later, involving points-leader Jeff Gordon, Tony Raines, AJ Allmendinger, Robby Gordon and Jeff Burton, coincidentally at the very same place on the race track.

Gordon was out of the race on the spot but he was only one of many top-runners who were involved in incidents during the race, as was the case with Kurt Busch who led the most laps but made contact with the wall twice, the last one taking him out of contention.

There were 13 cautions for 61 laps in total, nine of them coming out for accidents. The 400 laps of racing took en exhausting 4 hours and 36 minutes to be completed by the winner.

Despite crashing out of the race, Jeff Gordon continues to lead the Nextel Cup standings, with Jimmie Johnson now trailing him by 132 points.

Pos  Driver              Make        Laps
 1.  Casey Mears         Chevrolet   400
 2.  JJ Yeley            Chevrolet   400
 3.  Kyle Petty          Dodge       400
 4.  Reed Sorenson       Dodge       400
 5.  Brian Vickers       Toyota      400
 6.  Tony Stewart        Chevrolet   400
 7.  Ricky Rudd          Ford        400
 8.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet   400
 9.  Denny Hamlin        Chevrolet   400
10.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet   400
11.  Mark Martin         Chevrolet   400
12.  Matt Kenseth        Ford        400
13.  Bobby Labonte       Dodge       399
14.  Tony Raines         Chevrolet   399
15.  Carl Edwards        Ford        399
16.  Martin Truex Jr     Chevrolet   399
17.  David Stremme       Dodge       397
18.  Dave Blaney         Toyota      397
19.  Jamie McMurray      Ford        395
20.  Scott Riggs         Dodge       394
21.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet   394
22.  Robby Gordon        Ford        393
23.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge       390
24.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet   385
25.  Jeremy Mayfield     Toyota      382
26.  Joe Nemechek        Chevrolet   377
27.  Johnny Sauter       Chevrolet   376
28.  Juan Montoya        Dodge       369
29.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet   367
30.  Kyle Busch          Chevrolet   357
31.  AJ Allmendinger     Toyota      310
32.  Kurt Busch          Dodge       296
33.  Sterling Marlin     Chevrolet   293
34.  Kenny Wallace       Chevrolet   289
35.  David Gilliland     Ford        265
36.  Elliott Sadler      Dodge       261
37.  David Ragan         Ford        219
38.  Bill Elliott        Ford        218
39.  Ryan Newman         Dodge       172
40.  Dale Jarrett        Toyota       82
41.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet    62
42.  Jeff Green          Chevrolet    52
43.  Greg Biffle         Ford         45