Budweiser Shootout winner Kurt Busch got it right—Daytona is a whole new game.
With a push from 2010 Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray, Busch won Saturday night’s season-opening exhibition race when Denny Hamlin drew a black flag for passing below the yellow out-of-bounds line as the cars approached the finish.
Hamlin, who was inches ahead at the stripe, was demoted to 12th for the infraction and scored as the last car on the lead lap.
Without a teammate in the race, Busch took his first victory at Daytona—and his first victory on a restrictor-plate race track, for that matter—in the No. 22 Penske Dodge. NASCAR.com
“What an unbelievable experience, this two-car draft. I had no idea what to expect going in,” Busch said. “I was just going to take it one lap at a time and see how it played out.”
The ruling against Hamlin by NASCAR was not controversial. The yellow-line rule has been in effect and enforced since NASCAR returned to Daytona in July 2001, nearly five months following the last-lap accident that killed Dale Earnhardt.
“I thought it was a great, three-wide finish,” said Hamlin, “but obviously I used some pavement I shouldn’t have.”
McMurray, like everyone else, used the closing laps to get an idea of how next week’s season-opening Daytona 500 may be won.
“It looks like third place is the place to be (on the final lap),” McMurray said. “You know the second-place guy will try to go for the win. You have to hope the guy in fourth will stay (behind) the guy who’s in third.”
Some drivers liked the racing, and Newman, who for years has railed against the dangers of restrictor-plate races, was in favor of the new style.
“I honestly liked the way it separated out,” he said. “When you’re sitting four rows deep in the middle of three wide, there’s nothing you can physically do to make anything any different. When you are in those positions, or those two-car packs, you have a little more versatility to move around. I would rather it be the way it was than they way it has been at Talladega, three wide 10 rows deep.” MiamiHerald.com
Newman was third, followed by Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle.
Earnhardt Jr., the pole sitter, was involved in a wreck in the second segment of the race when Carl Edwards ran up on him, taking Earnhardt’s 88 Chevy out of the race.
Saturday’s race also marked NASCAR’s official competitive opening of the new racing surface at Daytona and a new fueling system that features a bulkier configuration of the new gas cans. The modification will eliminate the catch-can man in the pits and will reduce from seven to six the number of team members allowed to go over the wall.
But the new surface at Daytona International Speedway — a 2.5-mile tri-oval — was definitely the main attention-getter, once you got past the drivers. Saturday night marked the first official start for NASCAR’s main circuit. The track, repaved for the first time since 1978, now features 50,000 tons of fresh asphalt. Los Angeles Times
Click Here to Read More:
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Budweiser Shootout at Daytona - Race Results
| 
|