Most everyone thought that Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart’s pair of Joe Gibbs’ Toyotas would power through to win the 50th Daytona, but Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch’s Penske Dodges surprised everyone by teaming up to beat the Toyotas.
Almost out of the blue, Penske Racing scored a first Daytona 500 victory made even sweeter with a one-two sweep. Add another fine feather to Roger Penske racing teams’ tremendous list of accomplishments.
“We’ve been here almost thirty years trying to get into victory circle, and to achieve this against this level of competition is just unbelievable,” Penske said, “We’ve worked hard and come close, but I think it was a pure team effort. You saw it at the end there. You saw the #18 lined up with the #20 and the #2 lined up with the #12, and I think that’s what it took. To me, Ryan drove a masterful race. He did a hell of a job for us today.”
This was the first Daytona 500 with NASCAR’s new Car of Tomorrow, which makes barely half the downforce of the old Cup car, and it was interesting to watch the teams come to grips with the new car at
Daytona.
“These cars were designed and built to not drive as good as the cars that we used to run,” Tony Stewart commented after Thursday’s qualifying races, “So I can’t say it’s a surprise that they don’t handle as good because that’s what they were built for.”
After coming through the field from the back to win his qualifying race, Dale Earnhardt Jr talked about the difficulties of driving the downforce-reduced CoT at Daytona.
“This car makes it a little more challenging,” he said, “After twenty laps, it was definitely more challenging to drive the car, even running out front and up high. You’re correcting the car, sliding the rear end into the corner, backing into the fence into the entrance of every corner. It gets a little loose off, too.
![Carl Edwards battles with Dale Earnhardt Jr at Daytona [Pic Credit Ford Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/405809.jpg)
