RCR got ninth (Austin Dillon), 11th (Ryan Newman) and 18th (Paul Menard).
Advertisement
Joey Logano, the 2015 victor, clearly had a vehicle capable of making him the first to win the 500 in consecutive years (Sterling Marlin, 1994-95) and took sixth.
It was the first victory for Toyota in the annual race, and the first for team owner Joe Gibbs since 1993.
“This is the pinnacle of my career for sure”. For 20 laps, Hamlin followed Matt Kenseth around Daytona International Speedway patiently – or as patiently as one could be lapping the 2.5-mile track at 200 miles per hour. Truex Jr. and his Furniture Row Racing team have a technical alliance with Gibbs, but don’t really count as one of his cars.
They sped to the line side by side and a photo finish showed Hamlin the victor by barely a fender.
“I don’t know where that came from, I don’t know what happened, I can’t even figure out what I did”, Hamlin said. “But this wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for Toyotas sticking together all race long”.
“Denny Hamlin acknowledged afterward here at Daytona that when he was in the second grade, just 7 years old, he wrote down on a piece of paper that he wanted to win the Daytona 500”, Kucko said.
“The thrill in football, you can’t get any more excited than that, winning a Super Bowl”.
“It’s extremely hard”, said Gibbs. “Never give up on your dreams”. It was fun getting on and off pit road; I passed five guys coming in on the first pit stop.
Matt Kenseth, who is a two-time 500 victor, led 40 consecutive laps and looked like the tip of the Toyota arrow on the last lap, until Hamlin made a move to the outside lane to jumble the field.
Hamlin and Truex came thundering out of Turn 4 and were side by side in a drag race to the finish line. “I didn’t know we had won”.
“I was trying to be amusing”, Gibbs said. I could have done a little bit different coming to the line. I saw the pylon change and blink at the last second with the 11.
Hamlin’s JGR teammates Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards finished third and fifth, respectively.
Stewart, a three-time Cup champion, said during Fox’s telecast that he hopes to come to a Cup race in the next few weeks but won’t have an X-ray on his injured back until March 9.
Denny Hamlin nipped Martin Truex Jr.by a stand-on-your-seat, race-record.
It’s taken a decade, but Japanese manufacturer Toyota is finally starting to dominate America’s top tier of stock vehicle racing, NASCAR, against the long-established United States giants of the motor industry and the sport, General Motors and Ford. “We were not ready”, Wilson admitted.
Even though Busch produced a phenomenal comeback in order to win his first-ever Sprint Cup title, he said the challenges he faced didn’t mean he cherished it more than he would have had he claimed it in 2008 when he had his best season.
His biggest victory until now was in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. There’s a million things you could do differently, but I did what I thought I should do at the time to try to win.
“I wish we could have won obviously but just going to have to watch that on the highlight reel for the rest of my career I suppose”.
Since Harvick had kicked the last-lap hive, Hamlin made a decision to use this unexpected momentum to make a run at Kenseth. Hindsight I probably should have stayed in front of Martin and tried to race him back to the line. His Chevrolet hit an interior wall and then ricocheted into the grass, where Earnhardt found himself stuck. “It caught me by surprise there”, Earnhardt told Fox Sports.
Earnhardt dismissed that any special power got him past Hamlin with six laps remaining. Just busted my butt there.
Advertisement
“I just remember pulling up in front of the 4 (Kevin Harvick) and him giving me a push and not letting off when he was pushing and, ultimately, that was the push to the victory for us”.
