DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Four cars had a shot on the race’s final restart: Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson.
Try as they did, none of the latter three could get by Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet, then suddenly Busch did. Hamlin pushed him past Stewart. He blocked for about half a lap, then Stewart, with a push by Johnson, got into Busch. As Busch tried to block him one more time, Stewart stayed straight, pushed forward and sent Busch across his hood.
Four weeks after Stewart’s first race win as a team owner, Stewart won again in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway. It was Stewart’s third win in Daytona’s July race and his third win at the track overall.
Officials had to prevent Busch from going to Victory Lane.
Busch left here angry and vengeful last time he raced at Daytona International Speedway.
He did again Saturday night.
Johnson finished second, Hamlin finished third and Carl Edwards finished fourth.
Stewart, Busch, Hamlin and Johnson began separating from the pack with about 30 laps to go. Almost two seconds behind them were Juan Pablo Montoya and Edwards.
The four leaders bided their time, waiting for the right moment to move. Stewart, leading his former teammates, Busch and Hamlin, and three-time champion Johnson fighting for his first ever win in this mid-summer race.
With the specter of potential rain hanging over Daytona International Speedway, drivers began points racing early in the Coke Zero 400.
After the 160-lap race reached its halfway point (80 to go), it could have ended any time NASCAR decided it should. That happened last week at New Hampshire when rookie Joey Logano won his first race, last month in Charlotte when David Reutimann won his first race and in February’s season-opening Daytona 500.
On that day, Matt Kenseth won when NASCAR called the rain-shortened race, sitting in his car on pit road.
But a storm to the west stayed to the west. Just after 10 p.m., with a little more than 50 laps to go in the race, the heavy rain on the radar disappeared.
That storm was about 15 miles away from Daytona International Speedway when the race had about 90 laps to go. That early, every team began monitoring weather radars. The red blob, which marked the rain, to the west of Daytona Beach on radar maps moved slowly east.
On Lap 77, three laps before the race was official and could have been called, a 13-car crash on the back-stretch brought out a caution.
Kasey Kahne, Brad Keselowski, David Stremme, Brian Vickers, Clint Bowyer, Jamie McMurray, Michael Waltrip, Ryan Newman, Reed Sorenson and Jeff Gordon were all involved in the wreck.
Florida native Reutimann was, too, after contact he spun backward, barely missing Logano’s No. 20 Toyota. Instead, Reutimann smacked into Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s No. 88 Chevrolet. Earnhardt went back to the garage.
“Car’s too bad to get back out there,” he said, just after the wreck. “We just got it driving good, you know. Just freed it up enough to where it could go up through there. We were trying to get around them. Everybody was in the way at that point. We were picking them off one at a time moving to the front.”
Earnhardt wasn’t the lowest finishing Hendrick Motorsports driver, though.
Just 12 laps into the race, Mark Martin spun out on the backstretch. The Daytona Beach native, who already has three wins this season and was 11th in points heading into the race, ended his day with that wreck.
Auto Racing
Stewart survives crash-filled final lap to win Coke Zero 400
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