Throughout the history of the Daytona 500, there has never been a race like this. The race weekend started off on Sunday with a long rain delay leading NASCAR to postpone the race until Monday at 12pm. Eventually NASCAR decided to push the race to “7:00pm in the afternoon” as Mike Helton stated. I could explain why that is not afternoon but I will spare my readers. The green flag finally dropped just after 7pm. Never in the history of NASCAR racing have we seen what happened last night. This is the first running of the Daytona 500 starting under the lights and the first time we have ever seen a bizarre accident as weird as the Montoya wreck.
The season started off horribly for the likes of Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Trevor Bayne, and Danica Patrick who were all swept up when Elliot Sadler became impatient on lap 2 and punted Johnson into the outside wall on the front stretch causing him to get t-boned by David Regan. Danica would continue on to finish the race over 60 laps down and Kurt Busch returned but Regan and Johnson were totaled and went home.
Throughout the race there were a few smaller incidents including Newman cutting a tire and spinning (and his tire fell off during a pit stop causing the #22 of Allmendinger to rear end the US Army Chevy damaging its front end. Also Jeff Gordon blew his motor is what seems to be a gauge failure and there were multiple fuel pressure issues during the race.
The most notable headline of the night is on lap 160 while the race was under caution for David Stremme’s engine blowing, Montoya entered the pits to fix a mechanical issue with his race car. Upon exiting, Montoya rushed around the track trying to reach the pack before the green flag dropped. While going down the backstretch, something failed on his car causing him to lose control and slide into one of the jet dryers on the track. At impact, the jet dryer and its 200 gallons of jet fuel ignited into a massive fireball that continued to burn for a few minutes damaging the track. Montoya and the truck driver are ok but the fire caused the race to be red flagged for over two hours with Dave Blaney holding the lead since he did not pit under caution. You can check out the accident and fire here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC1L4n_4f0E
When the race finally resumed shortly after midnight, we witnessed a great 40 lap shootout to the finish that resulted in two major accidents taking out some of the big names like Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Jamie McMurray, and Carl Edwards among others. Although Edwards did continue on to an 8th place finish and Stewart, the defending series champion finished 16th.
The final laps saw a green-white-checker shootout between Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Neither Biffle nor Earnhardt Jr could catch the #17 of Matt Kenseth as he went on to win his second Daytona 500 (the first was in 2009). The race finally ended just before 1am on Tuesday morning in one of the longest speedweeks ever.
Your top ten is as follows:
1. Matt Kenseth #17 Ford
2. Dale Earnhardt Jr #88 Chevrolet
3. Greg Biffle #16 Ford
4. Denny Hamlin #11 Toyota
5. Jeff Burton #31 Chevrolet
6. Paul Menard #27 Chevrolet
7. Kevin Harvick #29 Chevrolet
8. Carl Edwards #99 Ford
9. Joey Logano #20 Toyota
10. Mark Martin #55 Toyota
Notables:
16. Tony Stewart #14 Chevrolet
29. Kasey Kahne #5 Chevrolet
32. Brad Keselowski #2 Dodge
35. Trevor Bayne #21 Ford
38. Danica Patrick #10 Chevrolet
39 Kurt Busch #51 Chevrolet
40. Jeff Gordon #24 Chevrolet
42. Jimmie Johnson #48 Chevrolet.
So what is your opinion on Biffle not going for the win?
ReplyDeleteTheres a few possibilities:
ReplyDelete1. He wanted his teammate to win and he was going to push him.
2. he didnt want to wreck himself, kenseth and jr trying to make the pass.
3. he did not have the momentum to make the pass and couldn't slingshot.
I would probably say it was either 1 or 3