Motor Sports Weekly News

By: Drew Hierwarter

Kevin Harvick was the surprise winner of the crash fest that NASCAR called the Bud Shootout Saturday night at Daytona. The reformatted race got off to a clean start but that only lasted until lap four when the first multi-car crash of the night took out rookie phenom Joey Logano, among others.

This was the thirtieth running of the special pre-season, non-points Shootout that had traditionally been open only to those teams who had qualified for a pole position in any race during the previous season. This always insured it would be a star studded race featuring the best of the best in a short sprint for big money.

But this year was different. This year NASCAR seeded the top six drivers from each of the four manufacturers, plus one wild card from each. At 28 cars, the field was the largest in Shootout history, and included some rather inexperienced drivers. Drivers like Scott Speed who had only driven in 5 Cup races previously, none of them at Daytona. And Joey Logano, in spite of the fact that he is slated to drive the Joe Gibbs’ number 20 this year, he only has 3 Cup races under his belt, and also no cup starts at Daytona.

On the other side of the coin was veteran Ryan Newman who was a spectator, ineligible because he had switched from his Roger Penske Dodge to the Chevrolet of Stewart-Hass racing. Newman is the defending champion of the Daytona 500 and has 42 career poles. And even though his boss and teammate, Tony Stewart was also ineligible on points, he was in the race as the wildcard for Chevrolet.

Whatever the reason for choosing the entrants for the race, and whatever their relative experience and previous performance or lack thereof, the other contributing factor to the wild night was the car itself. With no off season testing, most of the teams had to rely on experience and guess work to arrive at a proper set-up. The majority of the cars were very loose and a handful for all but the most experienced drivers to keep off the fence. Add in the fact that this was a non-points race for big money, and you had packs of cars running very aggressively, three and often four wide within no more than an inch or two from each other, all at nearly 190 mph. The surprise might be that there was so few wrecks not that there were so many.

Winner Kevin Harvick was also as surprised as anyone else when he was the first car under the checkered flag. “It just seemed I was in the wrong spot for the whole race. But there at the end, I would end up being in the right place at the right time and with a car to go with it. Man, I lost the draft, I got my right-front fender knocked off, I got my left-front fender knocked off, and they had to repair the right side at the [25-lap] break. But we never gave up.”

Harvick passed Jamie McMurray in the last turn on the last lap to claim the $200,000 payday. More than half of the starting field was in the garage when the race finally ended, appropriately under yellow for yet another multi-car wreck.

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The season opening NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, California was postponed by rain before they were able to complete the entire first rounds of competition. Racing will resume today, Monday, February 9^th.