Vickers crashes in 1st NASCAR race as Stewart’s fill

Saturday’s Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway ended with a mere handful of cars undamaged – and race victor Denny Hamlin’s Toyota wasn’t one of them. Denny Hamlin was leading at the time and won the exhibition race.

“This win couldn’t be possible without my teammates”, Hamlin said.

Joe Gibbs Racing has now won the Sprint Unlimited event with Hamlin coming away with this year’s first-place finish.

“It didn’t really come into play because we took the white flag under green, which was the same under the old format”, Logano said of the new overtime rule.

Joey Logano, last year’s Daytona 500 victor, finished second in a Ford and was followed by Paul Menard, Kyle Larson and Casey Mears, all in Chevrolets. Keselowski pitted for fuel only and restarted second.

Keselowski was almost in the midst of a major wreck with three laps to go when he nicked the rear right quarter panel of Carl Edwards, sending Edwards barreling into the wall and propelling a six-car crash.

“I don’t know if he was poised”.

Harvick wasn’t pleased with the accident, feeling somewhat apologetic for his team, but he also took it in stride, given Saturday’s race was merely an exhibition.

“I think my spotter said it best when he said it looked like there was a lot of construction debris out there”, Keselowski said.

A crash that began with Brian Vickers’ auto getting loose in the middle of the pack affected Dale Earnhardt Jr. and five other drivers.

McMurray, who started 24th of the 25 cars, made an early charge to run at the front of the pack, only to be taken out in the final multi-car crash.

NOTES: Jimmie Johnson received the pole starting spot through a blind draw on Friday. He missed 34 races last season. The race field was brought to 25 cars by adding the highest 2015 points finishers among those not qualified by aforementioned criteria….

Brian Vickers’ return lasted just 23 laps before a tire problem caused him to lose control of the vehicle he was driving for injured driver Tony Stewart.

Vickers has three wins in 318 career Sprint Cup starts, but only raced a full schedule twice since 2009.

“If you’re going to wreck, I guess tonight is the night to wreck”, Harvick told the Fox Sports telecast, alluding to next weekend’s Daytona 500.