Labonte Endures Long Day at Dover

DOVER, Del., Sunday, June 6, 2004 Bobby Labonte suffered with an ill-handling race car for most of the MBNA 400 A Race For Heroes June 6 at Dover International Speedway and finished 25^th.

Veteran Mark Martin won the event.

Labonte started in 18^th and stayed in the top-20 for much of the first 50 laps. However, the cars handling began to go away around Lap 50, and soon the handling conditions were so bad that Labotne fell to 34^th position. Two green-flag pit stops out of sequence from the leaders proved no avail, and Labonte brought the MBNA 60^th Anniversary D-Day car in the garage area.

Crew members began searching from the problem in both the front and rear of the car and even changed gears, but the problem could not be solved. After spending 19 laps in the garage, Labonte returned to action, but by Lap 150 he was still battling a loose race car and was in 36^th position, 27 laps down.

He finished the race in 25^th position, 30 laps down.

It was a long, long day, Labonte said. The car just went real loose early on, so loose I thought I was going to wreck a couple of times. We just had a bad day, but so did some other guys, so I guess were OK in the points.

If there was a silver lining to the day, several other drivers in the top 10 in points with Labonte suffered bad luck in a wild race that was red-flagged twice for accidents.

Labonte was in 31^st, 30 laps down on Lap 347, when a 19-car accident ended the day of many of the top contenders in points. This also allowed Labonte to make up laps on drivers involved in the accident, which helped move him from 31^st to 25^th.

All told, of the top 10 drivers in points entering the race, only three finished in the top 10 and two drivers, Jeff Gordon (36^th) and Jimmie Johnson (34^th) finished worse than Labonte. Championship contenders Matt Kenseth (22^nd) and Ryan Newman (24^th) finished just ahead of Labonte.

For the first time since April 4 at Texas, Labonte moved down in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup point standings, moving from sixth to eighth. He has 1,642 points and his 321 behind leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. He is just four points behind seventh-place Elliott Sadler and six points behind sixth-place Kurt Busch.

The next NEXTEL Cup event is the Pocono 500 June 13 at Pocono Raceway in Pocono, Pa. The race begins at 1 p.m. and will be broadcast live on FOX and MRN.