Paul Menard and the No. 21 Menards/Cardell Cabinets team bounced back from a mid-race penalty for an uncontrolled tire on a pit stop to score a solid 12th-place finish in Sunday’s Drydene 400 at Dover International Speedway.
Menard started the race from the 13th position and was rarely out of the top 15 for the entire race.
He ended the first 120-lap Stage in 11th place but had to go to the rear for the restart to serve a pit road penalty.
Despite a long, 120-lap, caution-free stage he managed to stay on the lead lap until the waning laps of Stage Two. Still, he held the “Lucky Dog” spot until the end of the stage, which allowed him to restart the third and final segment of the race from 14th place.
Menard moved up two spots in a caution-free third segment to finish 12th, his 14th top-15 finish this season.
Eddie Wood said he was proud of the job Menard and the team did at Dover.
“Paul did a great job of staying in the hunt in a race where there were only three cautions and two of them were for the ends of the stages,” Wood said. “It can be unlucky to wish for a caution because it might be for you, but it would have been interesting to see how we wound up if there had been a couple of yellows in the last half of the race.”
Menard and the No. 21 team now head to Talladega Superspeedway for next Sunday’s 1000bulbs.com 500.
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Menards
A family owned company started in 1958, Menards is headquartered in Eau Claire, WI. Menards has more than 300 retail stores located throughout the Midwest in the states of IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, NE, ND, OH, SD, WI and WY. Menards is known throughout the home improvement industry as the low price leader. It’s famous slogan “Save Big Money at Menards” is widely known and easy to remember. For more information, visit Menards.com, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest.
Wood Brothers Racing was formed in 1950 in Stuart, Va., by Hall of Famer Glen Wood. Wood Brothers Racing is the oldest active team and one of the winningest teams in NASCAR history. Since its founding, the team won 99 races (including at least one race in every decade for the last seven decades) and 120 poles in NASCAR’s top-tier series. Fielding only Ford products for its entire history, the Wood Brothers own the longest association of any motorsports team with a single manufacturer. Glen’s brother, Leonard, is known for inventing the modern pit stop. The team currently runs the Ford Mustang driven by Paul Menard in the famous No. 21 racer.
