Tony Raines Dover Report

Dover, DE-After a having a much needed weekend off, the Bayer Consumer Care Racing team and driver Tony Raines was back into racing action this past Saturday at the Dover Downs International Raceway.

Raines qualified the No. 33 Alka-Seltzer/Morning Relief Chevy Monte Carlo on Friday. With a time of 24.07 seconds and a speed of 149.563mph this put Raines in the 28^th starting position for Saturday's race. "We have been fighting this car since we brought it here," Raines said. "This is the same car that we had at Bristol. It didn't give us a very good qualifying time, but really performed well during the race. Hopefully, it will be good tomorrow."

After the green flag fell for the MBNA.COM 200, Raines was very fast and was headed to the front. When the first caution came out on lap 14, Raines had taken over the 16^th position. He continued to move up three more spots when the second caution of the day came out. Some of the leaders opted to pit, but crew chief Michael Kadlecik made the call for Raines to stay out. After everyone cycled through the pits, Raines had taken over the ninth place.

After the race was restarted, Raines was holding his spot, but his tires were starting to wear away. The Bayer Consumer Care Racing team was hoping for a caution. Tony dropped back to the 11^th spot, but the team got their wish when the caution was thrown on lap 95. Raines and the majority of the field came into pit taking on four new tires and making just a few adjustments for the car to handle better. After a 17-second pit stop, Raines gained two spots and rejoined the field in the ninth place.

After a 79-lap stretch of green flag racing, Raines had only lost one position to be in tenth when another yellow came out. Raines and the leaders pitted for the last time. The Bayer Consumer Care Racing team had another great pit stop and got Raines back out in the race in the same spot he was running before he came in, tenth.

Lap 185 of the 200-lap event brought out the final caution of the day. Three cars running ahead of Raines got together and were knocked out of the race. This moved Raines up to the seventh spot. Raines went on to finish in the seventh position. Raines remains in the sixth spot in the point standings but is only 94 points out of fifth.

Jeff Green went on to win the race.

"We had a good race car," Raines said after the race. "We could have finished better if we didn't have to start so far back. The car was evil in practice and in qualifying, but it got a whole lot better in the race. All in all I am very pleased with a seventh place finish. Chad Little (Tony's teammate) had a great fourth place finish. BACE Motorsports had an overall good weekend."

The Bayer Consumer Care Racing crew will head to the new 1.5 oval Kansas Speedway this coming Saturday.