Tony Stewart charged to the lead and passed a dominate Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle to win tonight’s Coke Zero 400.
This is Smoke’s third win this season tying him with Brad Keselowski for most wins this season. This win moves Stewart to 14th in overall wins in NASCAR with 47 victories. It is also his 18th victory at Daytona, second-most all time to Dale Earnhardt (Sr.).
Jeff Burton finished second with his 11th top-10 finish in 38 races at Daytona International Speedway. It is
his best finish in 2012.
Matt Kenseth finished third to post his 13th top-10 finish in 26 races at Daytona International Speedway.
It was crazy day for Sam Hornish Jr. who was filming segments for SPEED TV when he got the call to meet the plane at the airport to get to Daytona. Hornish subbed for AJ Allmendinger who has been temporarily suspended for violating NASCAR’s substance abuse policy. He got there, but luck wasn’t on his side, he brought out the first caution on lap 82. He lost his left rear tire and it shredded tearing up his car causing him to spin out.
The typical big Daytona wrecks fans are so used to came several times tonight. First on lap 92 when Kurt Busch thought he had room to make a third lane in the middle between Aric Almirola and Trevor Bayne, but there was no room. They collected Bobby Labonte, Denny Hamlin, and Juan Pablo Montoya. All would stay in the race except for Busch who took it to the garage after realizing the car would not drive properly.
As leaders were coming down to make their pitstops, Martin Truex Jr. wouldn’t see Jimmie Johnson signal that he was coming to pit sending him into the inside wall hard, with others spinning trying to avoid Johnson collecting many others. Jeff Gordon, Michael Waltrip, Joey Logano, Bill Elliott, and Regan Smith would also be involved. All but Johnson and Elliott would keep racing including Waltrip who earned a Top 10.
Brad Keselowski had a long night even without the distractions of his teammate. He was making a pit stop with Ryan Newman got spun into the right rear quarter panel of his car on pit road. Then he went for a solo spin on lap 146.
In the closing laps, we saw two “Big Ones.” First one came with 6 laps to go. Hamlin got a run and came down in front of his teammate Kyle Busch as he was forced down by Greg Biffle. Hamlin came back up collected Busch with many spinning behind trying to avoid other collecting Juan Pablo Montoya, Bayne, Ambrose, Bowyer, Gordon, Reutimann, Blaney, Gilliland, Mears, Menard, Ragan and Truex. Biffle was never involved and was able to keep racing as did Gordon, Reutimann, Busch, Ragan, and Blaney.
As the field came to take the checkered flag, Biffle was fighting to keep pushing Kenseth to the win, but ran out of real estate and spun Harvick out in the tri oval collecting Almirola, Blaney again, Busch again, Ragan again, Kahne, Kvapil, Earnhardt Jr., Regan Smith again, Edwards, Terry Labonte, and Jamie McMurray.