Kenseth Wins Rain Shortened Daytona 500

With the exception of a torrential downpour shortening the Daytona 500 by 48 laps, it was ‘business as usual’ at NASCAR’s season opening race.   It featured a dominant car at the beginning of the race, a big crash that wiped out a number of the top contenders, and a ‘dark horse’ winner who managed to avoid the on-track melee.  This year, it was veteran Matt Kenseth who won at Daytona for the first time after NASCAR decided not to resume the event after it was ‘red flagged’ due to a heavy rainstorm.

Kenseth took the lead just a few laps before the event was stopped due to the rain, thanks to an assist from Kevin Harvick who would finish second.  The two men teamed up to pass Elliot Sadler, who would blame himself for not closing off the attacking drivers—a move he suggests cost him the victory:

"If I would have made a better and smarter move, I'd be in Victory Lane right now. Very hard to swallow. Very emotional."

Kenseth is known as one of the less emotional drivers in the sport, but he said after the race that he was complaining to his wife recently about his inability to earn a victory at Daytona:

"I was telling her, 'Man, I'm really getting fed up with not winning, with not being a contender,'" he said. "It was actually starting to weigh on me more than we thought. We haven't been a serious contender for the championship for a few years. To be able to put it all together, be able to win the race, is pretty overwhelming."

"I actually am a pretty emotional guy. You guys just don't always really see it," he said. "I just wanted to wait until it was either over or we were going to go race again. I didn't want to let my emotions get too high one way or another."

"I tell you what, after last year, winning a race means a lot to me. I've had a lot of great opportunities in my life -- from my family getting me in racing and really ... all the sponsors that we have that have stuck by us and made this happen in an up-and-down economy.

"Man, I don't know. Winning the Daytona 500 is definitely a dream moment. It's just an unbelievable feeling."

In third place behind Kenseth and Harvick was AJ Allmendinger, with Clint Bowyer finishing fourth.  Sadler had to be content with fifth place after his “strategic miscue”. 

Polesitter Martin Truex, Jr. finished 11^th, with perennial restrictor plate track favorite Dale Earnhardt, Jr. dropping to 27^th after some poor pit work sent him a lap down early.   Earnhardt was racing aggressively to get back on the lead lap when he clipped Brian Vickers, setting off a 9 car crash.  Caught up in the mess was Kyle Busch, who was leading at the time and had been dominating the race since the green flag. A clearly disappointed Busch admonished Vickers and Earnhardt without “naming names”:

"Some guys having some bad days and not doing their best out there, just made their bad day our bad day. It's just a shame. It's just unfortunate that two guys got together that were a lap down that were fighting over nothing."

The NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule resumes next weekend at the California Speedway, with the annual trip to Las Vegas on the docket for the following Sunday.