Texas Race Report

In front of a sellout Texas crowd Greg Biffle dominated, leading 219 of 334 laps to coast to his second victory of the season.

The race started at 12:20 p.m. local time under a bright Texas sky when pole sitter, Ryan Newman led the field to the green. Tony Stewart led early before Biffle overtook him on lap 87. While Biffle went on to win, Stewart’s day ended in dramatic fashion when his car suddenly caught fire while speeding through turns one and two. Stewart climbed out of the inferno with minor burns. Several teams ran into bad luck when a lap 32 accident on the back stretch took out five cars early on. Casey Mears and Jamie McMurray would take turns running second throughout the latter half of the race, with Mears even using pit strategy to gain the lead on a the last restart of the day. But, it made little difference as Biffle made short work of Mears and held the field at arms length en route to the fifth win of his career. Following Biffle to the checkers were McMurray, Jimmie Johnson, Mears, and Sterling Marlin.

Ken Schrader had his hands full early in the race dodging wrecks as several accidents threatened to make it a short day for the Schwan’s Home Service Dodge team. But, Schrader maneuvered his way through the spinning obstacles and set sail for the top-20. Through the middle portion of the race Schrader was as fast as any car on the track, which helped while Biffle was putting over half the field a lap down. After racing up to 18 th crew chief David Hyder made the call to stay out, be the last to pit, and lead the first laps of the season, scoring five bonus points in the process.

While the Schwan’s Dodge was as good as any on the long runs, it took about 10 to 15 laps before Schrader was able to make his way back towards the front. Unfortunately, an inopportune caution fell just 10 laps after the only green flag pit stops of the day and with the scorching pace set by Biffle, trapped Schrader one lap down. The Schwan’s team was competitive all day, but by being down one lap was held to a 23 rd place finish.

“We had a pretty good car today,” said Schrader, “but we didn’t have some things fall our way that we needed to have the finish we deserved. This team worked extremely hard today and did a good job in the pits. Even down a lap we fought hard, but we couldn’t get the caution we needed in order to put us back on the lead lap. Had we got that break, we could have gotten a top-20 finish.”

The Samsung RadioShack 500 aired live on FOX and was broadcast live on PRN Radio.

The NASCAR Nextel Cup Series will next head to the one-mile Phoenix International Raceway, for Saturday’s Subway Fresh 500.