Daytona International Speedway Tag

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When Jamie McMurray pulled onto pit road for the first time in last Saturday’s Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway, he knew immediately the preferences he had selected for the new digital dashboard in his No. 1 Chevrolet simply weren’t going to work. There was nothing wrong with the dash itself. The problem lay in the options McMurray had picked and the way he had configured the series of lights designed to warn him about his pit road speed. “ThereRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It had to happen eventually. Wednesday’s second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice brought the first major accident of Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway. Ty Dillon’s No. 95 Chevrolet spewed oil on the track, the result of an oil cooler cracked along the weld. Cars running behind Dillon’s in Turn 2 checked up, and Michael Waltrip’s No. 93 Toyota tapped the back of Ryan Newman’s No. 31 Chevrolet, spinning the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. That started a chain reaction that sawRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Danica Patrick has 118 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts to her credit. She has no victories, no top fives. But as Patrick starts her fourth full season in Sprint Cup, paired with new crew chief Billy Scott, she points to her ability to get up to speed more quickly in practice as a source of confidence that the results will be better this year. “I’m far more confident,” Patrick said on Tuesday at Daytona International Speedway during NASCAR Media Day,Read More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When tandem “love-bug” racing was the order of the day at restrictor-plate tracks, Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t like it one bit. Hated it, if you want to know the truth. NASCAR’s most popular driver couldn’t see the logic in pushing another car to victory, even if it happened to be a car driven by a teammate. When Jimmie Johnson won at Talladega in 2008, Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet was the caboose, and the caboose finished fourth. To Earnhardt, that wasRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief With the Sprint Unlimited now in the books and Denny Hamlin its victor, it is time to look at some key takeaways from Saturday night’s event. 1) NASCAR overtime rules prove insignificant The field was set after a late race caution with Hamlin leading Joey Logano, Paul Menard, and a charging Kyle Larson. They passed the overtime line on the backstretch of Daytona International Speedway, and after taking the white flag several cars ended up in the wall in Turn 2. NASCAR had a chance toRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor NASCAR has a new set of rules for their green-white-checkered finishes in 2016 and one race into the much-hyped ‘overtime’ rules, we’re already seeing a continuation of a recurring theme – anticlimactic finishes. The Sprint Unlimited was a fiercely contested race. All night long drivers were weaving in and out of traffic, spectacular crashes ensued and all along the way the suspense built toward what seemed to be an epic battle for the win between Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and a whole host of others. This trulyRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Saturday’s Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway ended with a mere handful of cars undamaged—and race winner Denny Hamlin’s Toyota wasn’t one of them. But Hamlin got his wreck out of the way early in a two-car incident with Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s Ford on Lap 13 and won the race in overtime with a large swatch of silver tape on the right side of his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Camry. Hamlin triumphed in the season-opening non-points event for theRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Defending Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano saved his best for the last two minutes of the second and final practice session on Saturday afternoon. Drafting with teammate Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney of Wood Brothers Racing, a Team Penske affiliate, Logano topped the speed chart at 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway with a lap at 195.933 mph (45.934 seconds), the fastest of the day. Keselowski was a close second at 195.848 mph, followed by Blaney at 195.797 mph. Those three driversRead More

By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief After battling his own health issues the past several years, Brian Vickers is set for a golden opportunity in replacement duty for an injured Tony Stewart. Stewart-Haas Racing announced on Friday that Vickers will run the Sprint Unlimited (a non-points event) Saturday night, and the 58th annual Daytona 500. Vickers, 32, has seen his promising career derailed with a series of health issues that date back to 2010. However, after missing all but opening two races last season, the battle-tested North Carolina native has overcome aRead More

By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor Sometimes crew chiefs don’t get their full due in the sport of NASCAR. That wasnt the case Friday at Daytona International Speedway as crew chiefs were at the forefront of how the grid for Saturday night’s Sprint Unlimited was decided. The exhibition event’s starting lineup was decided by a random draw from the crew chiefs of the teams eligible to compete. Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, nabbed the pole position for the race. Johnson has won at Daytona three times in his NASCAR SprintRead More