Hamlin wins Dover Nationwide race

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver scored the team's ninth victory of the season out of fourteen events contested thus far, also claiming his second ever win at the 'Monster Mile', leading 131 out of 200 laps.

Following a three-hour delay due to rain, Hamlin led the field on the first lap, overtaking pole-sitter and 'King of Concrete' Carl Edwards. He ran up front throughout and only lost the lead to his JGR Sprint Cup teammate Kyle Busch, who later hit trouble paving the way for Hamlin to get to Victory Lane.

"It's a great win for us," said Hamlin. "It was a shame to see Kyle and Brad get tore up because it really would've been a great race to the end. The run that we pulled out the most is when we made the biggest adjustments."

"Going into the last run we made a tonne of adjustments and we were the class of the field but I just knew that if those guys came back up there and they were going to work on their cars we needed to work on ours."

Busch was probably the fastest driver on the track before picking up damage on his car while leading the race. During a pitstop halfway through the race his Toyota got hit on the left front by Brad Keselowski, who was exiting his pitstall, while Busch was going past beside Hamlin.

Busch had to make an extra stop to fix damage to the left-front fender but charged through the field despite his car not being in perfect shape.

However his comeback drive came to an abrupt end when he was put against the wall with 32 laps remaining by his Braun Racing teammate Jason Leffler, who lost control of his car and collected Busch, who was running on the outside of him.

"I was on the outside of a teammate and got wrecked," Busch said about the incident. "I feel like he could've stayed on the bottom where he should've been.

"I was three lanes up in the top going by three or four of them and had them all about cleared. Just got dumped by a teammate. He can't stand to be number two."

Edwards was in contention for most of the distance but never looked to have enough speed to contend for victory, eventually settling for second place ahead of David Stremme, who ran a solid and trouble-free race to finish third in his Rusty Wallace Inc Chevrolet.

Greg Biffle rounded up the top five, overtaking rookie Joey Logano in the closing stages after struggling to keep up with him in the early going. He had an early brush with the wall and then tapped rookie Landon Cassil into a spin, but despite this, a pitroad penalty and a sticking throttle he was able to recover in the second half of the race.

Logano made a strong Nationwide Series debut, finishing sixth and best of the non-Cup drivers. The 18-year-old made some good overtaking manoeuvres and eventually lived up to the hype surrounding his first outing of the year in the No. 20 JRG Toyota.

Dario Franchitti completed the race on his return after five weeks out of his car. Despite falling out of the lead lap halfway through, he was able to get back in contention to finish in 15th place as the last car on the lead lap. He also continues to lead the Raybestos rookie standings.

"It was hard, it was really hard," the Scot said. "We got our lap back and then we discovered we had a loose left rear and we had to make another pit stop. It was at one to go, so by the time I got going again the leader was on my bumper.

"The fact that I was able to pull away from the leader in that last 20 laps made me feel very happy. The car was good today. It's just tough in traffic getting aero tight."

Clint Bowyer finished ninth and continues to lead the points, followed by Kyle Busch and Edwards.

Pos  Driver              Car        Laps
 1.  Denny Hamlin        Toyota     200
 2.  Carl Edwards        Ford       200
 3.  David Stremme       Chevrolet  200
 4.  David Reutimann     Toyota     200
 5.  Greg Biffle         Ford       200
 6.  Joey Logano         Toyota     200
 7.  Brad Keselowski     Chevrolet  200
 8.  Mike Wallace        Toyota     200
 9.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet  200
10.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge      200
11.  Steve Wallace       Chevrolet  200
12.  Scott Wimmer        Chevrolet  200
13.  Kelly Bires         Ford       200
14.  Bobby Hamilton Jr   Ford       200
15.  Dario Franchitti    Dodge      200
16.  Jason Keller        Chevrolet  199
17.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet  199
18.  Mike Bliss          Chevrolet  198
19.  Josh Wise           Dodge      198
20.  Kenny Wallace       Chevrolet  198
21.  Stanton Barrett     Chevrolet  198
22.  Morgan Shepherd     Dodge      196
23.  Sam Hornish Jr      Dodge      195
24.  Derrike Cope        Chevrolet  193
25.  Landon Cassill      Chevrolet  191
26.  Eric McClure        Chevrolet  188
27.  Jason Leffler       Toyota     169
28.  Kyle Busch          Toyota     168
29.  David Ragan         Ford       161
30.  Marcos Ambrose      Ford       152
31.  Bryan Clauson       Dodge      130
32.  Brad Coleman        Ford       101
33.  Brett Rowe          Chevrolet  45
34.  Donnie Neuenberger  Ford       43
35.  Kevin Lepage        Ford       38
36.  Kertus Davis        Chevrolet  12
37.  Brad Teague         Chevrolet  11
38.  J C Stout           Chevrolet  9
39.  Johnny Chapman      Chevrolet  9
40.  Kenny Hendrick      Chevrolet  8
41.  Terry Cook          Chevrolet  7
42.  Burney Lamar        Ford       6
43.  Mike Harmon         Chevrolet  4