Daytona 500 postponed to Monday by rain

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | February 18, 2024 9:44 AM ET

The 66th running of the Daytona 500 has been postponed until Monday afternoon, due to rain and a bunch of pissant wimps. Those Sports Car drivers raced for 23 hours partly in the rain until they put out the checker flag a lap early 'cause they don't know how to count. NASCAR Cup Series drivers will take to the track at 4pm ET. The race will follow the NASCAR Xfinity Series race, which was postponed from Saturday to 11am ET on Monday. Any of you fan boys want to buy an autograph as long as you are still standing around before we go over to lola's House of Pleasure over on the beach?

 

2024 Daytona 500 Highlights | NASCAR on FOX

NASCAR on FOX
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The Daytona 500 got the Nascar season started off with an exciting race. Check out the full highlights as Christopher Bell, William Byron, Kyle Busch and more battled it out at the Daytona 500 .

 

Why's Everybody Whining & Crying About The Daytona 500?

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Kenny Wallace discusses the Daytona 500.

 

WHO WON THE DAYTONA 500???? -- Video Analyzed.

Analyzed? You can't even see the line, you butthead!

David Land
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#NASCAR #Daytona500 #Racing

https://patreon.com/davidland Controversial finish at the 2024 Daytona 500.. between William Byron and Alex Bowman... who actually won???? …

 

NASCAR 2024 Daytona 500: Winning team post race

Cup Scene
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Full Daytona 500 post race presser with Rick Hendrick, Jeff Gordon and Rudy Fugle at Daytona International Speedway, Mon. Feb. 19, 2024. For all the latest NASCAR News visit https://www.CupScene.com ! …

 

NASCAR 2024 Daytona 500: William Byron post race

Cup Scene
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Full Daytona 500 post race presser with William Byron at Daytona International Speedway, Mon. Feb. 19, 2024. For all the latest NASCAR News visit https://www.CupScene.com !

 

Byron gives Hendrick a 40th anniversary to remember with Daytona 500 win

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emailBy Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service | February 19, 2024 9:28 PM ET "Yo Fox dude, Get your foot off my bumper."

William Byron gave team owner Rick Hendrick something extra to celebrate in the 40th anniversary year of Hendrick Motorsports.

In a frantic scramble after a restart on lap 197 of 200 in the Daytona 500, Byron reached the finish line and took the white flag moments before NASCAR called the fifth caution of the evening as Ross Chastain slid wildly through the infield grass off the bumper of Austin Cindric’s Ford.

Alex Bowman was a close second to his teammate at the moment of caution, giving Hendrick a one-two finish and the organization’s first victory in the Great American Race since Jimmie Johnson beat teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the stripe in 2013.

The victory was Hendrick’s ninth in the Daytona 500, tying the company with Petty Enterprises for most in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series most prestigious event. The race was postponed from Sunday to Monday because of heavy rains during the weekend.

“I’m just a kid from racing on computers and winning the Daytona 500,” said the 26-year-old Byron, who picked up the 11th victory of his career and his second at Daytona, the first coming in the 2020 summer race at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

“I can’t believe it. I wish my dad was here. He’s sick, but this is for him, man. We’ve been through so much, and we sat up in the grandstands together and watched the race (when Byron was younger). This is so freaking cool.”

Hendrick could barely contain his elation in Victory Lane.

“I’m telling you, you couldn’t write the script any better,” he said. “When we thought about coming down here the first time, we didn’t think we should be here, felt so out of place.

“We win this on our 40th to the day, it’s just… and tied a record now, so that’s awesome.”

Before the final restart, Chastain was racing at the front of the field on lap 192 when a bump from Alex Bowman got Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron out of shape and knocked Byron into the right rear of Brad Keselowski’s Ford.

Keselowski turned up the track into the Ford of Joey Logano, who had led a race-high 45 laps to that point. Reigning series champion Ryan Blaney’s Ford was among the 23 cars involved in the accident that left string of mangled vehicles strewn along the backstretch.

The wreck knocked Blaney, Keselowski and Logano out of the race, along with Tyler Reddick, defending race winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Daniel Suarez and Todd Gilliland. NASCAR red-flagged the race for 15 minutes 27 seconds for track clean-up.

“Speedway racing again,” Logano said ruefully. “It’s a lot of fun until this happens. It was pretty interesting with a lot of pushing and shoving there at the end. Our car was able to take it. Our Mustang was so fast. It could lead a line really well. I kind of thought I had the cars I wanted around me. I had at least one I wanted around me, but just couldn’t make it work.”

“Obviously, hate what happened on that backstretch,” Byron said of the accident. “I just got pushed and got sideways. But so proud of this team, 40th anniversary to the day, on Monday.

“Just extremely blessed and thankful for all the opportunities, and we just want to keep it going. We have a lot to prove this year, and this is a good start, obviously.”

How much Byron has yet to prove is debatable. He won a series-best six races last year, qualified for the Championship 4 and finished third in the final standings.

The race was not quite five laps old when an eight-car accident off Turn 4 started the inevitable attrition. Contact from Keselowski’s Ford in a tightly bunched line of the outside knocked the Toyota of John Hunter Nemechek into the center lane and into the side of Harrison Burton’s Ford.

Burton slid toward the infield, collecting the Chevrolet of rookie Carson Hocevar. Burton’s No. 21 Mustang shot up the track and slammed into the Ford of Kaz Grala and the Chevrolet of Austin Dillon. Behind Dillon, Hocevar careened into the path of seven-time series champion Jimmie Johnson, who couldn’t avoid the collision.

The wreck eliminated the cars of Burton, Hocevar and Grala. Dillon took his No. 3 Chevy to the garage for extensive repairs, and Johnson lost two laps on pit road as his Legacy Motor Club crew worked frantically to repair his Camry.

“I don’t remember exactly who it was on my outside,” Burton said after a trip to the infield care center. “It just looked like they either got a bad push or got loose and just hit me in the right side and sent me across.

“The grass was so wet that once I got in the grass, I thought I’d be OK, but the car just kept going and going… so really sad that our day is over as quick as it was. We had a really fast Ford. It’s just a bummer. There’s nothing we can do but just move on and try to win next week.”

It took 187 more laps of racing before the colossal wreck that dwarfed the earlier incident thinned the field and set up the fight to the finish among the cars that survived.

In a race that featured 41 lead changes among 20 drivers, Christopher Bell ran third, followed by Corey LaJoie, Bubba Wallace and AJ Allmendinger. Chastain, who didn’t have quite enough room when he dived to the inside of Cindric on the penultimate lap, finished 21st, one spot ahead of Cindric.

 

Cindric blames LaJoie for last lap Daytona 500 crash.

Oh yeah? Go blame yo mama, slick!

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | February 20, 2024 9:02 AM ET

Austin Cindric blamed Corey LaJoie for causing the final wreck in the Daytona 500 that led to the race ending under caution.
LaJoie said of the incident. "Oh yeah? Go blame yo mama, slick!”

Cindric and Ross Chastain bounced off each other coming to the trioval and the white flag in Monday night’s race. Initially, Chastain took the blame for being too aggressive, but outside the infield care center, Cindric explained that his Team Penske Ford Mustang had been hit by LaJoie and sent up the track as Chastain was coming down trying to pass leader William Byron.

“Me getting wrecked. He didn’t see that,” Cindric said of what he told Chastain. “It’s just a really unfortunate end. We had a shot to win the Daytona 500. We were really in great position with the outside lane breaking up and kind of one-on-one with the 24 (Byron) with the whole pack behind, so you can’t really ask for anything else other than that out of myself and the team.

“It just sucks a little bit.”

Byron led the field off Turn 4 with Cindric on the bottom and Chastain to his outside. LaJoie was on the bottom drafting with Cindric. When Byron moved to cover Chastain’s run from the outside lane, the Trackhouse Racing driver pulled to the left to get to his inside right as LaJoie tried to get to the inside of Cindric, was blocked, and then hit the rear bumper of Cindric to send him sideways into Chastain.

Cindric and Chastain spun through the grass before coming back up onto the racetrack. Cindric was clipped by oncoming traffic.

“Corey finished fourth, so congrats,” Cindric said. “He tried to fit a car where there wasn’t a car and just continued to push through my left rear until I wrecked. I understand trying to shuck me out or put up an opportunity because I was in probably the best spot possible coming to the white, but I’m in the care center and I don’t even know where I finished. So it really sucks, racing sucks, NASCAR sucks, racers suck, and all the fans but mine suck, but that’s racing.”

Byron won the race and Cindric finished 22nd with Chastain 21st.

On the run coming to the white flag, LaJoie had help from AJ Allmendinger. LaJoie thanked Allmendinger for sticking with him when they returned to pit road.

“When I went to fill the bottom, the 2 (Cindric) left an entire lane open, and then he threw a lazy block and wrecked a couple cars and himself,” LaJoie said of the incident: Go blame yo mama, slick!”

 

Petty Race Recap - Daytona 500..

A better analysis than the coonass at the start of this thread.

Petty Family Racing
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WINNER: William Byron

 

NASCAR looking into slow pace of Daytona 500

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | February 21, 2024 2:05 PM ET

The slow race pace early in the Daytona 500 did not go unnoticed by NASCAR and the circumstances leading to that will be reviewed.

In the race’s first stage, the field slowed the pace down dramatically when going into fuel-saving mode. Typically, a full-speed lap around Daytona International Speedway in a pack would be in the 46- to 47-second bracket. But when the pace slowed Monday because the field was not full throttle, the lap times were over 50s.

“I think that’s something that just over time, 76 years of NASCAR racing, our race teams are just so good, and our teams are so good, and our drivers are so good, and the strategy and the preparation that goes into these events, they don’t leave any stones unturned,” NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Wednesday. “The Daytona 500, or superspeedway racing in general, has kind of come down to that, and basically what you’re trying to do is spend the least amount of time on pit road that you can. So, you’re getting through those stoppages, whether it be Stage 1 or 2, you’re getting the opportunity to gain some track position.

“It is something that we’re looking into. Ultimately, we want to drop the green flag on the race, and they’re racing as hard as they can until we drop the checkered flag. There’s some strategy in between there. We’ll definitely take a much deeper dive at this particular situation and the strategy that goes into it.”

Martin Truex Jr. came over his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team radio at one point and said it felt like they were “crawling.” His teammate, Denny Hamlin, described it as a 175-mile-per-hour “pace lap” on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” Hamlin said. “Fuel, yes, it’s always been somewhat of a big deal, but over the last few years of Next Gen racing on superspeedways, it’s been a dramatic deal. With the field all compressed into a one-and-a-half second group, you can save enough gas to be the last car in line and then jump to the first car in line after a pit cycle as long as you do a good job on entry of the pits, rolling down pit road, stopping, and then exiting pit road and then exiting with a group. You can flip-flop the field.”

Superspeedway pit stops have become less about tires and more about fuel-only. The tone for fuel being the big story was set early in Daytona during the one-stop Bluegreen Vacations Duel races. Hamlin admitted his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team played that strategy since he ran in the back for much of his Duel race but then jumped to the front after the pit cycle.

“Everyone is trying to do it and then I realized, holy (expletive), these guys are doing it on Lap 2,” he said of the Daytona 500. “I think I was on the top line and I’m trying to push the (expletive) out of whoever was in front of me, and I’m like, ‘What the hell? Why aren’t these guys going? Push the guy in front of you now.’ When I’m trying to push someone mid-race, early race, whatever, that is me whispering in the competitor’s ear in front of me, ‘Go hit the guy in front of you now. Go push him.’ I’m trying to keep that line moving.”

Hamlin wasn’t against saving fuel but would have preferred the field race some before doing so. If the field got single-file, saving fuel would have made more sense, but not when running side-by-side where Hamlin felt everyone was content not to pass and be conservative.

Said Hamlin, “The field just kept getting slower and slower and slower.”