“We finished bad, but that was the move I thought I had to make to try to preserve the win”. People were all insane, excited.
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Matt Sullivan/Getty Images DAYTONA BEACH, FL – FEBRUARY 21: Denny Hamlin, driver of the #11 FedEx Express Toyota, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series DAYTONA 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 21, 2016 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kyle Busch (No. 18 M&M’s 75 Toyota), also of Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), finished third.
Kenseth was rolling in the No. 20 Toyota, leading 40 straight laps with only one more to go.
Hamlin won the 2016 Daytona 500 Sunday in the closest finish in the history of the race. He admitted it was all reaction. He became the third driver in the last 13 years to lead the most laps and win the Daytona 500. “Just going to have to watch that on the highlight reel for the rest of my career, I suppose, the rest of my life”. “It would be an injustice for them if we didn’t”. Kenseth tried to throw a block but Hamlin wedged into the middle between Kenseth and Truex, and Kenseth had to save his vehicle from wrecking.
Hamlin, who is in a contract season at Joe Gibbs Racing and is coming off surgery to fix the ligament in his right knee, emerged from the cacophony of roaring engines and fans by making the big move at the right time. “I was trying to side-draft a guy beside me and, boy, it pinned the right front”. I am just happy for the entire GMS Racing organization.
“I didn’t know we had won”. Last March, his father said that the family “couldn’t point to any one serious thing that happened to him”. I saw the pylon change and blink at the last second for the 11.
The finish line camera angle showed just how insanely close of a race it was as Hamlin beat Truex by about the length of the splitter.
“You’d rather get beat by a few feet than 4 inches, absolutely”, Truex said.
It was the closest margin of victory in race history since the advent of electronic scoring and gave Toyota its first DAYTONA 500 championship.
Hamlin even overcame a costly mistake when he slid into his pit on a late pit stop, costing him time and valuable track position. “Those are split-second decisions”.
When Hamlin’s dream finally came true on Sunday, his mother, Mary Lou Hamlin, tweeted out a photo of her son’s second-grade letter.
Events both personal and professional have transformed Kyle Busch as a NASCAR driver. If I do win the Daytona 500 I could win 1,000,000 dollars. Gibbs, who in November celebrated with Busch the teams first Sprint Cup title in a decade, won the Daytona 500 for the first time since Dale Jarrett in 1993.
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Kenseth said he wanted to hold the lead with one lap remaining. Notable drivers, such as Chase Elliott, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Carl Edwards, Danica Patrick and Greg Biffle were involved in accidents throughout the course of the race.
