Pole-sitter Chase Elliott out of Daytona 500 early

2014 NASCAR Xfinity Series Champion Chase Elliott scored his first-career Daytona victory after taking the checkered flag in Saturday’s Powershares QQQ 300 at Daytona International Speedway.

It was the ideal prelude to today’s Sprint Cup opener, the Daytona 500, which Elliott will start on the pole – and with tougher competition chasing him. He reached 197.131 miles per hour on his eighth and final lap Saturday at Daytona International Speedway. He drove the TaxSlayer.com Chevrolet fielded by JR Motorsports, and he led three times for 19 laps. Elliott was running eighth when he was sandwiched between cars on the front stretch.

“If someone can get like a blowtorch, burn the yellow stripes off the bumper, that’s going to help”, Blaney said of the stripe on the back of his vehicle that signifies his rookie status. He put the entire field on notice that he would be the man to beat with that move.

“It caught me by surprise”, Earnhardt said.

I just got loose….

The favorite to win the Daytona 500 Sunday, Earnhardt was attempting to make a high-side pass when he lost control and spun off the track into the wall just before pit road, sustaining significant damage.

“But for us drivers, you want to know can we bump or hook bumpers, because some guys are getting away with it. I guess they haven’t penalized anybody yet, so I guess everybody can get away with it”.

“We will just have to look past it and get on for Atlanta”, Elliott said. “I was having so much fun I hate that we’re standing here right now”. We took two tires there and just didn’t have overall grip I was hoping for.

Now Elliott heads into his first Daytona 500 with 120 laps more experience working with spotter Eddie D’Hondt while competing with aggressive drivers such as Logano. “That was just normal”.

“This auto is something special”, Earnhardt said. I go until 5 or 6 today and start at 5 in the morning tomorrow. I feel like we need to keep learning and earning respect because here in this kind of racing we need more friends.

The No. 88 Chevrolet that Hendrick Motorsports brought to Daytona won three times previous year, and Earnhardt admitted after the qualifying race that he allowed himself to daydream about winning as a tribute to his father. But he’s a de facto teammate to Team Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, the defending Daytona 500 victor, and should the Fords figure out an effective game plan, they may be able to disrupt the Gibbs and Hendrick juggernaut. But Ryan Blaney (19th), Brian Scott (24th), Ty Dillon (25th), Trevor Bayne (28th) and Elliott (37th) were largely inconsistent throughout.

“It’s another win at Daytona for the Earnhardts, adding to the legacy”, Earnhardt said in victory lane Thursday.

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