Aric Almirola won his first official race Friday night at Dover International Speedway!

photo credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

Almirola came back from two laps down after blowing a tire early on in the race to overtake a dominate Kyle Busch for the win.

“It’s a dream come true,” Almirola said. “Track position is so tough here, you have to have a phenomenal truck to do what we did today. I’m not going to take any credit for that. It’s a lot of fun when you have a really good truck here. … We fought hard today, and it was a good day.”

“What a truck! We had a good truck right off the trailer,” Almirola said. “To do it the way we did it, to come back from two laps down, blowing a right-front tire, not managing our truck. I just want to thank the fans. What a race!”

Almirola is credited for winning a Nationwide Series race in Milwaukee in the summer of  ’07. Almirola qualified and started the race for Denny Hamlin, who was late flying in to the track from Cup activities in Sonoma.

“Put it this way, that trophy’s not at my house on a mantle,” Almirola said. “This one will be…tonight!”

Almirola took advantage of Kyle Busch’s woes. After starting from the pole, Busch led a dominating race-high 172 laps. Busch ran out of gas as the race went into overtime and ran four miles over the scheduled 200 laps. Busch was credited with a 16th place finish with “fuel pump” cited as the reason. “Out of gas” is all Busch said as he left the speedway.

James Buescher grabbed a runner-up finish after dueling with Justin Lofton for the position over the final two laps. Ricky Carmichael scored his best finish to date going home 4th. Todd Bodine finished 5th followed by David Starr, Matt Crafton, Mike Skinner, Ryan Sieg and Johnny Benson rounding out the top-10.

For the (unofficial) race results, click here (nascar.com)

There were 10 cautions for 42 laps and 8 lead changes among 6 drivers: K. Busch 1-59; R. Hornaday Jr. 60-61; K. Busch 62-87; T. Malsam 88-98; K. Busch 99-123; J. White 124-128; J. Benson 129-135; K. Busch 136-197; A. Almirola 198-204

Aric Almirola takes over the lead in the standings by 27 points over 2nd place driver, Todd Bodine.