Returning to her short-track racing roots, Johanna Long scored her best finish of the season and tied her career-best finish with a 12th place in Sunday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Iowa Speedway. The Dupont Pioneer 250 was originally scheduled for Saturday night but was rained out. Long, driving the No. 70 Chevy for Warsaw-based ML Motorsports, started 21st in the 40-car field. Previously, the 21-year-old Pensacola, Fla., native’s best finish of the season was a 13th-place finish at Richmond International Raceway in April. Long also finished 12th at both Daytona and Kentucky last year in her first season with ML Motorsports. Trevor Bayne won the race at the 7/8-mile track, followed in the top five by Austin Dillon, Elliot Sadler, Sam Hornish Jr., and Kyle Larson. Brian Scott, Regan Smith, Justin Allgaier, Ryan Blaney and Mike Bliss rounded out the top 10. The victory capped a memorable week for Bayne, who got married on Tuesday in North Carolina. His wife, Ashton, wasn't with him for his first career Nationwide victory in Texas in 2011, but she was right by his side at Iowa Speedway. "Such a special week for me. I was teared up at the altar on Tuesday and about teared up on victory lane on Sunday," Bayne said. "Not many women would be willing to get married on Tuesday and come to Iowa as part of their honeymoon." Dillon won his third straight pole on Saturday afternoon, tying a series record last matched by Bayne in 2010, and the No. 3 car led for 207 laps on Sunday. But Dillon's car also tended to run out of steam on long runs, and the race stayed caution-free for the final 72 laps. It was hardly surprising that the No. 6 car from Roush-Fenway Racing was there to take control and give Ford its 200th win in the Nationwide series. Bayne's hard-charging pursuit of Dillon paid off with 13 laps left as the race's dominant cars briefly rubbed while fighting for the lead. Bayne took over two laps later and cruised to the fourth win in five starts for the No. 6 car in Iowa. The previous three victories came from Ricky Stenhouse Jr., now a Sprint Cup regular. "I knew it wouldn't be long before we caught him," Bayne said of Dillon. "I caught him a couple of laps sooner than I thought. But once I got to him you could really see that he was frustrated. When you lead a race like that and you dominate all day and you see somebody catching you, man it's heartbreaking."
