2005 Dodge Caravan Ignition

Your describibg an overly rich fuel condition or vapor lock. Maybe the engine is too rich on a start up from an injector leaking down into a cylinder(rare but happens). One leaking injector will drip but shouldn't be so bad as to cause a no start but will lower your fuel system pressure and cause a long crank time and the smell. Or maybe you have a leak in the system doing the same thing, it is lowering the fuel systems entire pressure causing a long time to build pressure and your smelling the leak. Sometimes if there is a problem with the evaporative emissions system vapor lock can occur or fuel in the charcoal cannister may be entering the intake at the wrong time making an overly rich condition and a hard start with the smell. The gas cap could not be venting properly, or you may just have a bad fuel pump. This happens. I would have all these systems checked with a scan tool. It will read all the computer systems for fault codes. This could lead to the problem. I'm sure it's been tuned recently because old spark plugs and a dirty air filter can cause this also. The dealer uses a DRBIII R for their scan but a good shop can read these codes with a generic scan tool also.

The company has had bulletins sent to the dealer about the gas caps being bad in the past so you might try another cap or drilling a small hole in yours to test it. That could be why the hard starting.
If you don't have any fault codes from the computer that moniters all the systems, you'll have to have the fuel pressure and the other things checked I talked about. Your welcome, much Mahalo for posting the thank-you.