Hamlin spoils Earnhardt return with last-lap pass for win

Ir didn’t only affect his Toyota teammates, but Earnhardt as well. Caught up in the melee were Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth, Ty Dillon, Erik Jones and Elliott Sadler. But Busch was able to hold on for the checkered flag, the only lap that he led all day. Stewart, the three-time champion who co-owns the team with Gene Haas, retired at the end of last season and watched his four cars race from the pits.

“We tore up three really good JGR cars, ” Busch later told reporters. “Denny is so smart, he knows what he’s doing out there”. Everyone gets their shot and it is going to give them their shot and be different. “Just one of those things you can’t do anything about”. He faded to sixth. But judging from their late-race histrionics Sunday, FOX Sports analysts and legendary racers Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Gordon never bothered to learn the first rule of their second trade.

Beginning this year, all NASCAR races have been divided into three segments, with points awarded to the top ten finishers of the first two segments. Busch won the first stage of the race and Earnhardt Jr. started on the front row.

Earlier this year, NASCAR announced a modified format that the drivers in 2017 Daytona 500 will follow.

LaJoie had the harder road to race into the Daytona 500. And on many levels, it’s hard not to feel happy for Waltrip to end his career with an excellent last run bringing home his beloved Aaron’s Dream machine in one piece. It caused Sorenson to wreck.

“It’s great to have this powerful team, a great owner, a champion driver that turned into a full-time owner”, Busch said.

Sometimes, if you’re inclined to believe in signs of what’s to come, they can be subtle, vague and mysterious. And under a new rule to prevent cars with too much damage from returning to the track to shed more debris, now cars that can not be repaired in a five-minute window on pit road head to the garage. Jimmie Johnson. Star after star. “But eventually I want to hand the reigns off”.

“I can understand his disappointment, for sure”, Blaney said of Elliott, his friend and rival.

“Over the last couple years, it’s kind of hard to make moves through the middle of the pack through the field with 20 to go”. “The look on Gene Haas’ face right now, that smile, make it all worth it”, the retired driver said. Attending any NASCAR race is, for me at least, always a privilege and a pleasure (right up until you sit in hours of traffic trying to get away from the track) and there’s no better NASCAR experience than the Great American Race itself.

There were a lot of demographic upswings compared to the 2016 race. The big names are getting old, and the sport is going to be in desperate need of some superstars very soon. Overall, Ford has amassed 649 Cup Series victories.

It’s an all-too-common issue for the young guns in the sport: The wins just aren’t there. Both drivers not only earned points for finishing in the top 10, but also earned a playoff point.

On Sunday night, though, Stewart stood in Daytona International Speedway’s victory lane celebrating triumph in the race that had always eluded him. His Hendrick Motorsports team instead wanted to test his Chevrolet to see how strong it will be in Sunday’s big event. Each stage victor is also given one playoff point. It’s been pondered whether this is just a result of the restrictor plate racing we’ve seen for years or if the segmentation of the race had something to do with it.

“We were comfortable with how it worked”, O’Donnell said.