Sunday’s 57th running of the Daytona 500, NASCAR’s biggest race, was a sure sign that there’s a changing of guard under way in the Sprint Cup Series.
Joey Logano, the 24-year-old native of Middletown, Conn., who spent some of his formative years living in Alpharetta and racing on the Legends track at Atlanta Motor Speedway, held off a pack of veterans over an intense 25 laps at the race’s end to get his first Daytona 500 victory.
On the other end of the age spectrum — and the other end of the finishing order — Jeff Gordon crashed on the last lap of his 23rd and final Daytona 500, winding up 33rd. And Tony Stewart, who has won nearly every major race in NASCAR but the 500, saw his Daytona 500 winless streak extended to 17 after he was involved in an early crash with Ryan Blaney and Matt Kenseth and finished 42nd.
Logano was strong from the start, leading the race six times for 31 laps. But he was at his best when the late-race pressure was on. He held the lead in a wild run in the closing laps as the lead pack ran three abreast with Logano’s yellow Ford at the front.
With little more than two laps remaining, Justin Allgaier and Ty Dillon collided, bringing out a caution flag that led to a six-minute red-flag period and set up a green-white-checkered-flag run to the finish that extended the race to 203 laps.
With a legion of the sport’s best restrictor-plate racers lined up behind Logano, poised to gang up and draft past him, the youngster who had never before finished in the top five at Daytona pulled away on the final restart and maintained control of the race through the final two laps. He drove under the checkered flag ahead of Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson.
It was the ninth victory of his Cup career and it came in his 221st start. It was the second Daytona 500 win for his car owner, Roger Penske, the first coming in 2008 with Ryan Newman.
“That feeling of winning the Daytona 500, I can’t explain how cool this is,” Logano said “I said in an interview that this was our worst race track last year and we worked really hard to figure out how we could get better at it and all the hard work got us the win today.”
Hamlin was Logano’s teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing when the youngster landed his first Sprint Cup ride only to fail to live up to expectations and eventually move to Team Penske.
“I just think the [Gibbs] situation didn’t work for him,” Hamlin said. “I think he matured and did his homework. He’s really become one of the elite drivers in our sport.
“Every single weekend, you know you’re going to have to beat the 22 (car). That’s something we didn’t say about Joey just three years ago.”
Gordon, who led for 87 laps, wound up smiling even with the disappointing finish.
“I don’t know what else to say other than I enjoyed it,” he said. “I’m not going to miss those final laps. That was just crazy.”
Stewart showed more disappointment as he climbed from his battered car. Through much of Speedweeks, he’d exhibited much of the competitiveness that he’d shown before the struggles of the past two seasons seemed to sap his spirit. But in the end, there was no reason to celebrate.
“Well, it is just part of it,” Stewart said after finishing 42nd. “Yes, it’s not what we had planned, but we stuck with the plan from the start of the race and that was to stay up front as much as we could. We knew the first two runs of the race we were probably going to have to adjust on the car. I just didn’t make it far enough into the second run there to get a chance to adjust on it.”
Kenseth and Blaney didn’t fare much better. Kenseth soldiered on to a 36th-place finish, and Blaney blew the engine in his No. 21 Ford and finished 39th.
Sunday’s race was without the “Big One” multi-car crash that usually occurs on the restrictor-plate tracks at Daytona and Talladega, even though there were several Big Ones in the preliminary races leading up to the 500.
Most of the incidents in the 500 involved just one or two drivers, and the lead pack ran side-by-side, often three wide, without a problem.
Harvick joked that the drivers must have gotten the wrecking out of their system in the preliminary races.
Earnhardt Jr. and Hamlin had more logical explanations, saying the other races were at night, when the track had more grip and enticed drivers to take more chances. On Sunday, the sun was out, the track was slicker, and drivers took fewer chances.
“The slick conditions … make us have to give each other a little more room,” Hamlin said.
About the Author
