The 52nd running of the Daytona 500 was memorable for a pothole that caused two red flags, which meant it took over six hours to complete.
But it should also be remembered for some great racing and a brilliant finish. It crowned a first-time winner in Jamie McMurray and left many of his rivals reflecting on a race they felt they felt they could have won.
At 200 laps, the scheduled distance, Greg Biffle’s Roush Ford led the field after rocketing past longtime leader Clint Bowyer into Turn 3 two laps previously. In fact, he was a couple of hundred yards from being crowned the victor – only for veteran Bill Elliott (at 54-years old) to slide into young gun Joey Logano (still just 19!) and into the Turn 3 wall, which brought out the yellows and froze the race order.
It also meant a green-white-checkered finish, NASCAR’s answer to overtime. When the green flew it was Kevin Harvick, the 2007 winner, who put one hand on regaining the trophy. Harvick believed he had the fastest car in the field, but just needed clear air – and the bottom racing line – to ram home his advantage.
From the outside of row two at the double-file restart, Harvick pushed Martin Truex Jr past Biffle, and then decisively switched to the inside, bullying Truex up the racetrack into Turn 1 and claiming the inside line that he craved. But if Harvick thought he was going to win, he was wrong.
Biffle got sideways at Turn 1, and caused cars behind him to slow down as he caught the slide. In the chain reaction, Kasey Kahne clipped Tony Stewart and rebounded into the path of Jeff Gordon, who was already mad with Kahne for deserting him in the draft earlier on. He barged into the rear of Kahne’s car a couple of times before properly sending him spinning, and he was quickly collected by Robert Richardson.
Under old NASCAR rules, the resulting yellow flag would have signaled the end of the race. But a new mandate to allow multiple attempts at a green flag finish (ie three green-white-checkers) meant the overtime would run and run. Like Biffle had been, new leader Harvick was now the sitting duck at the head of the queue.
The green flew again at lap 206, with Harvick leading and Carl Edwards pushing him on the inside line down to Turn 1. On the backstretch, the scene of so many bumpdraft maneuvers in Daytona’s restrictor-plate era, the crucial move of the race occurred.
Biffle gave his old Roush-Ford team-mate McMurray (who had made a poor getaway at the restart after spinning his rear wheels) a massive push on the outside line, as Harvick clung to his favored inside, allowing McMurray to sail into the lead into Turn 3.
As the white flag flew, McMurray led from Biffle and Truex, with a gap back to Bowyer and a charging Dale Earnhardt Jr. Junior had taken four fresh tires during a caution with seven laps to go, and his Hendrick-run Chevy was the big mover entering the last lap.
Earnhardt and Bowyer worked together off Turn 2 and built up huge momentum, Earnhardt surging up to second place, and weaving between Truex and Biffle as he did so. Now there was only one car to pass, and the leader was worried: “I saw the 88 behind me and thought, ‘oh no, it’s an Earnhardt – they always win around here’.”
McMurray needn’t have worried, as Junior failed to catch him by 0.119secs in the closing yards.
“It was all a blur,” said Earnhardt. “I was just goin’ where they weren’t. If there was room to put fit my front radiator, I put it in there and nailed the throttle. We all wiggled, and somehow I got through. Not bad to finish second from 22nd at the first green-white-checkered – it’s awesome and it sucks at the same time.”
Third placed finisher Biffle added: “I was half a corner away from winning the Daytona 500 [when the yellow came out]. Then, at the final restart, I feel I made my move too soon. I had pushed Jamie through Turns 1 and 2 and down the backstretch, pushed us both by the rest, but then I tried to pass him on the frontstretch. I should’ve pushed him again for while and waited until the backstretch to make a move, which is where Dale Jr. got that huge run on me.”
Bowyer finished fourth, and admitted he made a mistake choosing the wrong lane on the final lap that had probably cost him second or at least third. David Reutimann came from nowhere in the closing stages to nab fifth, having finally sorted his restarts when it mattered: “The restarts were killing us, and I couldn’t do anything right when it came to picking the right lane. Thankfully, I got the car where it needed to be when it counted and I had a great run down to the finish line.”
His Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota team-mate, Truex, finished sixth.
Harvick, who tumbled to seventh, was bitter about how he fell down the order, and fingered the driver who he felt had robbed him of a chance to win: “We had the car to beat, and just zigged when we shoulda zagged. The 99 [Edwards] doesn’t really know where he’s going. He went to the middle and kind of jammed it all up. I just wish we had someone behind us who knew how to draft.”
Matt Kenseth finished eighth, and the previous year's winner struggled against a “baseball-sized” hole in the front of his car that probably answered the question of where the pothole’s missing asphalt had gone. Edwards finished ninth, ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya, who had a quick car but picked the wrong lane at the wrong time and was never able to work his way back to the front.
While the racing was of the highest order in restrictor-plate terms, the hole that appeared in the track prompted a shabby old situation. The issue came right out of the blue, and caused the first red flag on lap 122, after John Andretti had clattered the wall in Turn 2 due to a blow-out.
The first attempt at a fix failed to bond to the track, so was ripped out and tried again, which seemed to work after a delay of 1hr and 40mins. But after another 35 laps of racing, the reds flew again as the repair had not only failed, but the hole had got even bigger this time. The next solution? Believe it or not: body filler. And this time it worked!
The lengthy delays meant the race ended, quite unintentionally, under the lights. This meant that the handling requirements of the cars were vastly different than teams had planned for, as track temperature dropped by over 30 degrees (F) from the heat of a sunny Floridian afternoon into a chilly winter’s evening. Some struggled massively, including Saturday’s Nationwide Series [now Xfinity] race winner Tony Stewart, whose 15 race wins at Daytona still fail to include a 500 success. He trailed home a frustrated 22nd.
Four-time and reigning champion Jimmie Johnson didn’t make the finish, as the rear axle of his Hendrick Chevy failed. He had struggled with tire wear throughout and suffered a right-rear puncture just before the first red flag.
Johnson had run near the front previously, and appeared to be strong on long runs, but didn’t take the opportunity to blame his retirement on the pothole: “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’d been hitting it with the right-side tires, and it was something in the left-side that broke.”
Besides Earnhardt’s strong late run, it wasn’t a great day for Rick Hendrick’s team. Poleman Mark Martin was never a contender and came home a disappointing 12th. Jeff Gordon wrecked on the very last lap of the race and trundled across the line in 26th.
The mighty Joe Gibbs Toyota team also disappointed, with Kyle Busch 14th and Denny Hamlin 17th. The latter blamed Montoya’s team for “lying to us” about how many tires they would take in the last round of pitstops, which jammed his car in the box behind the Colombian: “They said he was going to do two, so we did two and he did four, so I got stuck in my pits and rejoined with two old tires. We got screwed, really.”
Another frontrunner to bemoan pit strategy was Kurt Busch, who led strongly in the first half of the race, but fell away badly as the track conditions cooled. The Penske Dodge star, who finished 23rd, said: “We were running third but pitted with six laps to go for four new tires. Then it was yellow after yellow, and you just can’t leapfrog the cars from that far back.” Still, that was better than team-mates Brad Keselowski and Sam Hornish, who both shunted early on and trailed home in the lower reaches of the top 30 in their battered cars.
One of the stars of the day was AJ Allmendinger, who started from the back after his engine blew in practice, but the former Champ Car star zoomed from last to first in 45 laps in his Richard Petty-run Ford. But a spin while battling with Jeff Gordon cost him 10 laps in the garage to get his car going again. Another former single-seater man to impress was ex-F1 racer Scott Speed, who led for nine laps on well-worn tires after his Red Bull Toyota squad opted to pit him out of sequence. He eventually finished 19th.
The man of the hour, undoubtedly, was McMurray. He had won at Daytona before, in the July night race for Jack Roush’s team, but the emotion of winning NASCAR’s biggest race on his return to Ganassi Racing hit him in victory lane.
In between the tears, he said: “This is truly awesome. Four or five months ago Chip and Felix Sabates [team co-owners] took a chance on me, and what a way to pay them back. I don’t know that I’ve ever cried like that before, but this is so unreal, so unbelievable, that I can’t explain it.”
What’s also difficult to reconcile is McMurray’s knack at winning with Ganassi in unexpected circumstances. He won on his second-ever Cup start with the team as a rookie at Charlotte in 2002, and scooped the 500 on his first start after four years away at Roush.
Looks like he’s here to stay this time.
