Heading into Saturday's DRIVE4COPD 300 Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway, Sprint Cup regulars including Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were most definitely considered favorites to win. After all the three had combined to claim the winner's trophy in the last eight February Nationwide events at Daytona.
Stewart had been the most dominant in that string as of late, winning four of the last five season-opening races. He added to the string on Saturday to claim Nationwide February wins at Daytona for five of the last six years and making it nine straight for himself, Harvick, and Earnhardt Jr. by visiting victory lane at the conclusion of Saturday's race.
Harvick and Earnhardt Jr. kept Stewart company up front much of the day until contact between Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski with about 29 laps to go set off a chain reaction that led to Earnhardt Jr. getting airborne and flipping his car and collecting Brendan Gaughan, Kyle Busch, Scott Riggs, Greg Biffle, Tony Raines, Joe Nemechek, and Harvick, among others.
While Earnhardt's day was ended by the incident that resulted in a red flag of approximately 11 minutes, Harvick was able to continue. After repairs were made to his car, Harvick soldiered back up through the field with some help from Keselowski and was able to salvage a third-place finish.
Edwards, meanwhile, had to settle for a runner-up finish for the second-consecutive year.
Stewart's trip to victory lane didn't come without a tough battle in the closing laps with rookie driver Justin Allgaier, though. As the laps wound down, Allgaier stayed behind Stewart in the second spot but was shuffled back to the fourth position on the white flage lap. And fourth was where Allgaier finished the day.
As Stewart and the other front-runners were making their way to the checkered flag, Busch spun and collected Keselowski to bring out the caution on the final lap. However, since the white flag had already waved, NASCAR didn't get the opportunity to test its revisions to the green-white-checker rule. Anyway, Keselowski wound up with a 14th-place finish following the incident, and Busch ended up 18th.
The sixth through 10th-place finishers included: Paul Menard, who made his way through the field from his 43rd starting spot to finish sixth; Joey Logano, who finished seventh; eighth-place finisher James Buescher, who isn't normally seen among the top-10 finishing order; Kasey Kahne in ninth; and 10th-place finisher Steve Wallace.
Brian Vickers survived the carnage throughout the day that involved no fewer than 28 cars of the 43 that started the race to round out the top-five.
Despite the dominance of Stewart, Harvick, and Earnhardt Jr. of Nationwide Series competition at Daytona, the big story heading into Saturday's race was Danica Patrick's NASCAR debut. Her day started off seemingly event free. She did get a lap down early, but got that lap back under the next caution. However her day went downhill from there. On her second pit stop of the day, she stalled her car on pit road. Then, just as she claimed to become more comfortable in the car, she got caught up in one of the big wrecks of the day just past the halfway point of the race. The damage she suffered from the incident prematurely ended her debut.
That was after missing a similar accident she managed to drive right through witout incident early in the race on lap seven.
"I don't know how I didn't, but I didn't," Patrick told crew chief Tony Eury Jr. on the radio after her early close call.
Patrick wasn't the only female making her Nationwide Series debut on Saturday. Chrissy Wallace, daughter of series veteran Mike Wallace, also started her first Nationwide Series event with the DRIVE4COPD 300. Unfortunately for Wallace, her day ended even earlier than Patrick's. Wallace's debut ended on lap one when she and Menard made contact. Soon after climbing out of the car, Wallace said that her debut came to an abrubt halt because Menard was racing "too hard, too early."
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