That winning feeling

For the second time in three Craftsman Truck Series races, Ron Hornaday was the class of the field. Unfortunately for Hornaday, neither of those races has ended with him spraying a bottle of champagne in victory lane.

This time, it was Kyle Busch celebrating Hornaday's misfortune, making the Nextel Cup Series rookie two-for-two in the truck series this year. Busch won't have a chance to make it three consecutive wins for Billy Ballew Motorsports at Texas, but he'll be looking for his third win a week later at Michigan.

And while Busch isn't slated to run in the series after that race, things may change. Shane Hmiel, the team's regular driver, has been suspended by NASCAR and Ballew is expected to have Blake Feese, one of Busch's teammates at Hendrick Motorsports, in his Chevrolet at Texas. Boston Reid, another of Hendrick's developmental drivers, is also likely to get some time with the team.

But no one will blame Busch if he finds a way to grab a few more races himself. After all, winning every time out isn't something that grows old.

"No, it's definitely not boring," Busch said with a smile. "It's always great to win in any division. NASCAR's divisions, I wouldn't say that they're step downs, I'd just say they're steps over. That's due to the tough nature of NASCAR itself. ... It's just cool to be able to win in any series given the fact that you have Cup veterans in all of them."

Last month at Charlotte, Busch won the truck series race one week and the Busch Series race the next. At Dover, if not for contact with Kevin Harvick during the Busch Series race, he might have won both races in less than six hours after rain postponed the truck race 24 hours.

In his first truck win, Busch was by far the class of the field. That wasn't the case at the Monster Mile, as Hornaday led all but one lap in a 135-lap span that started with the race's 14th lap, when he got past Terry Cook on a restart.

Hornaday was leading Busch by 3.8 seconds when the caution waved for debris on lap 147. Hornaday came out of the pits fourth, but was back on pit road moments later after his Kevin Harvick Inc. team had a lug nut missing.

That dropped Hornaday to 13th, with David Reutimann in the lead after choosing not to pit to gain track position. Busch was fourth, but the first of the drivers to have four fresh tires. In time, that would prove to be the difference. That and the fact that the miscue by Hornaday's crew made his job a whole lot easier.

"Ron Hornaday was really, really strong there at the beginning and was throughout the whole event," Busch said. "He probably should have won the race today but track position was just about everything. Once we got out front, it was easy to sail away from the rest of them. I knew [runnerup] Tony Stewart was going to be tough, especially because it is Tony. He has been successful here and the truck he was driving with Randy Goss as the crew chief was good and I know they always have something up their sleeves.

"[But] he wasn't quite as good as we were today. I don't know if that was because he was behind me in dirty air but it was still cool to get us out front and get a win here."

Cool, perhaps, as long as your name wasn't Ron Hornaday. At Ohio's Mansfield Motorsports Speedway last month, Hornaday may have easily won a rough-and-tumble affair if he weren't penalized for jumping a restart.

This time it was a pit miscue that ended his chances of victory, though he did rally to finish fourth. On a day when Ted Musgrave and Bobby Hamilton - the top two in points entering the day - had problems, Hornaday's finish boosted him to fourth in the standings, just 100 points behind Musgrave.

"We were an absolute rocketship. This should have been our race but we will take where we finished," Hornaday said. "I think that everyone saw what we could do today. We had a bad stop but you win and lose as a team so there is no one to blame. We still had a great day."

Not as great as the days of Busch, Stewart or Cook, but a lot better than most. Reutimann was pleased with his first top-five of a frustrating season and rookie Timothy Peters posted a career-best sixth-place run in just his fourth race, but it was a tough race for many.

Things got hairy from the start in a race that saw a track-record 11 cautions. Steve Park and Robert Huffman were knocked out by a wreck on the first lap; Jack Sprague's day was ended after an incident with Todd Bodine; Jimmy Spencer was six laps off the pace in an ill-handling truck while teammate Musgrave was three laps down, and a loose lug nut left Hamilton 21st.

"Obviously that wasn't the finish we were looking for today, but it could have been a lot worse," Musgrave said. "Somehow we managed to hang on to the [points] lead, but we can't keep finishing like this and expect to stay up front in the standings."

But one driver with something to smile about was Ricky Craven, who moved to second in points with a seventh-place run in his backup Roush Racing Ford. A crash in practice sent Craven to the backup, which wasn't ready for qualifying, leaving him last in the field to start the race.

Reutimann and Cook were among the few who enjoyed their trip to Dover. A variety of woes have cost Reuti-mann, who had a solid year as a rookie in 2004 with Darrell Waltrip Motorsports. Trying to recapture some of that magic, crew chief Jason Overstreet decided to stay out and see what their Toy-ota could do.

It turned out it could lead for 33 laps, just not the final 19.

"If the yellows would have fell a little differently, we might have won - and that's why you take a gamble," Reutimann said. "We just ran out of tires at the end."

Knowing that, he didn't try to block Busch when the race went green following the ninth caution on lap 182.

"Kyle Busch and I raced together at Nemco [Motor-sports] for a little while and he's on 'kill' whenever he leaves pit road," Reutimann said. "He's not racing for points - and I don't think he would have wrecked me - but I didn't want to take any chances and mess around and let everyone else catch me. And then Tony went by, too."

Morgan/Dollar Motorsports had Stewart in its second Chevrolet at Charlotte, but drivetrain problems ruined what was shaping up to be a strong run.

"This team is too good for that, so I told them if they didn't have anyone in it at Dover, I would like to come back and give it another ride," Stewart said. "These guys did an awesome job putting it back together and bringing a good truck here. We had an awesome day today. We just couldn't get the track position we needed at the end."

Busch had it. And parlayed it into another trip to victory lane.

• Mentioned Drivers:
• David Reutimann