McMurray Wins Pothole-Delayed Daytona 500 February 14, 2010
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Jamie McMurray, driving the No. 1 Impala, holds off Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 88 Impala to win the Daytona 500. Photo courtesy NASCAR.
In his first race back driving a car for Chip Ganassi, Jamie McMurray won the Daytona 500 in a race delayed for two and half hours – not by NASCAR’s evil nemesis rain, but a pothole that developed in the racing groove of Daytona’s high-banked turns.
The two delays totaled nearly three hours as crews repeatedly had to fill the pothole that developed between turns one and two. But when racing finally resumed – now under the lights of the 2.5-mile track – McMurray worked his way to the front during a 32-lap shootout.
Before the season-opening race, NASCAR modified its green-white-checker overtime rules to allow for up to three such attempts. Under the previous rules, only one attempt was allowed. During the second and final such restart, a push from Greg Biffle boosted McMurray to the front and to the checkered flag, despite a valiant effort by Dale Earnhardt Jr., who restarting 10th, bobbed and weaved his way through traffic to finish second.
“I got a big run down the backstretch again. I looked in my mirror and saw the 88 [Earnhardt],” McMurray said. “I’ll be honest, I was like, ‘crap, this guy has won a lot of races here. His family has an incredible history here.’”
“You know, I believe everything happens for a reason. I just was like, I hope this isn’t his turn to win the Daytona 500, I hope this is mine,” he added.
Crews work to fix the pothole that developed between turns one and two during the Daytona 500. Photo courtesy NASCAR.
The pothole was the confluence of a number of issues. Heavy rains that had hit the central Florida coast penetrated Daytona’s asphalt, causing the dirt banking underneath to swell. Later, with the force of 43 race cars racing at nearly 200 mph on the track, something had to give, and ultimately it was the more than 30-year old racing surface.
While the track was inspected before the race and track officials had the proper equipment and supplies to fix the problem, the unusually cold weather added a challenge to the fix.
“We take full responsibility,” said Daytona International Speedway president Robin Braig. “We got to get better at doing our patchwork. If we have to do it again, we have to figure out the compounds. We really got to understand the temperature and the heat of the pavement. We just couldn’t get it to bond.”
McMurray’s win gives Ganassi his first Daytona 500 as a team owner and brings a sense of legitimacy to his hiring at Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, the merged racing team of Ganassi’s NASCAR operation with that of Dale Earnhardt Inc. After being let go from Roush Fenway so the organization could reduce its team size to the NASCAR-mandated four teams, McMurray returned to Ganassi, whom he drove for early in his career.
Much to the chagrin of Earnhardt Jr.’s loyal fans, it also gives team co-owner Teresa Earnhardt a Daytona 500 win before her most popular driver step-son.
Potholes notwithstanding, it was a great display for NASCAR’s opening event. NASCAR brought a bigger restrictor plate, allowing drivers more throttle control. A new shark fin kept cars on the track, avoiding a repeat of last season’s two aerial displays at fellow restrictor-plate track Talladega Superspeedway, changes this blog suggested last year after Carl Edwards’ last-lap wreck at Talladega that sent his car flying into the catch fence. The changes to the restrictor plate package – along with a renewed commitment on the part of NASCAR to let drivers be drivers, leaving the field to police itself when it came to bump drafting – made for great racing.
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