Racing News Digest

After waiting rain delayed then postponed the Daytona 500 on Sunday the drivers and fans were set for a race Monday afternoon. Mother Nature had other plans and the race was delayed once again until Monday night. And it didn’t even finish until early Tuesday morning after a long red flag.

But Matt kenseth, Greg Biffle and Dale Earnhardt Jr battled for the checkered flag at the end. Kenseth emerged victorious with Dale Jr grabbing 2nd for the first ever prime time night Daytona 500 race.

Kenseth led 50 of the 200 laps. Only Denny Hamlin led more with 57. About 13 different drivers led laps through out the night.

Kind of crazy night. NASCAR got the race started pretty fast around 7pm and by lap 2 we were under caution already for a crash the wiped out Jimmy Johnson, Danica Patrick, Kurt Busch, defending 500 champ Trevor Bayne and David Ragan. Johnson got a little loose when he got a little tap from Elliot Sadler and went into the wall.

Hendrick Motorsports saw more problems in the night when Jeff Gordon’s #24 blew and engine. And in a late race wreck the newcomer to Hendrick, Kasey Kahne got collected up.

Then latter in the race around lap 160, under caution, Juan Pablo Montoya had something in the rear end of this car break and slammed into the back of a jet dryer. This caused a huge fire when the jet fuel in the jet dryer caught fire. It took officials quite a while to get that out. The field was under the red flag for about an hour and half.

I liked the Daytona 500 under the lights. Thought that was pretty cool. Thinking it is something they should consider in the future. Even just heard one caller on a show say that all the 500′s should be on a MONDAY night.