Championship Moments
Dateline: 09/25/2000Dover Downs hosted all three of NASCAR's top touring series this weekend and the Championship contenders proved to be the major story for all three races.
Biffle Stronghold
Friday's Craftsman Truck Series race saw points leader Greg Biffle coast home to a second place finish behind teammate Kurt Busch. The story isn't quite that simple though as the man chasing Biffle for the title, Mike Wallace, dominated the race and was leading with just a couple of laps remaining when he and Kurt Busch got together. Busch went on to win the race, Wallace went hard into the wall and ended up with a disappointing 12th place finish.
Biffle now has 290 point lead with only two races remaining. He now only needs to start the remaining two races in order to clinch the 2000 Craftsman Truck Series Championship and as the points leader, Biffle is guaranteed at least a provisional starting spot.
Although the title will most likely be officially clinched at the next race in Texas, this weekend's Dover race truly locked up the big money for Biffle.
Green Seeing Red
The Busch Grand National Series race on Saturday saw current points leader Jeff Green find his way into the spotlight. On lap 30 of the 200 lap race Jeff Green avoided the spinning cars of Kyle Petty and Mike Stefanik but then got run over by a hard charging Jimmy Spencer before he made it back to the start/finish to take the yellow flag.
Green has had a virtually perfect 2000 season over the first 26 races with the most wins of any Busch series regular with 5, (tied for wins with Winston Cup racer Mark Martin) most top fives with 20 and the most top tens with 22. Any other season Green's 42nd place finish this late in the season would have been a disaster, but even given this horrible finish Green still has a 516 point lead over chaser Jason Keller with only five races left in the 2000 season.
Labonte Steady As Challengers Fall
The big show on Sunday saw Bobby Labonte just keep doing what he's been doing all year long. Nothing spectacular but he avoided the problems and cruised to another solid top five finish. The big difference this week in the points was that Jeff Burton, Dale Jarrett and Dale Earnhardt all had problems.
Jarrett was involved in an early race wreck and lost 98 laps in the pits getting repairs. He was only able to salvage a 32nd place finish. Jeff Burton was leading and looked strong when he blew a tire and wrecked hard into the third turn wall. This ended his day leaving him buried deep in 36th place. Finally Dale Earnhardt just never found the handle on the tricky concrete and finished two laps down in 17th spot.
This leaves Bobby with a commanding 249 point lead with only seven races remaining on the 2000 schedule. The Winston Cup chase is still the most in doubt of the three leading series but even this is starting to look like a long shot for the challengers.
