Along with Jeff Burton and rookie David Ragan, Mike Wallace somehow managed to avoid the last lap carnage at
Daytona, and was rewarded by bringing home fourth place for the small Miccosukee Resorts Chevrolet team.
The last gasp wasn't Wallace's only 'miracle' of the annual Speedweeks, however, for he only made the 500 field by a similar margin to that which separated winner Kevin Harvick and runner-up Mark Martin at the finish, claiming one of the 'non-qualified' driver spots at the chequer in his Gatorade Duel on Thursday. Just to be in the race was something special, but claiming a top four result was the icing on the cake for the Phoenix Racing operation.
"Fourth place in the Daytona 500 is pretty cool for our race team. I can tell you that," Wallace confirmed, "I just like this race track. I pay attention to what the cars do, what the air does around cars, where I can put myself. I only put myself where I know my car can go somewhere."
Despite having his gameplan laid out, Wallace found himself struggling in the early stages and was grateful to the help of others for being in a position to claim his result.
"We were horrible for the first part of the race - I drove around so long not seeing any other cars, I was bored," he recalled, "I want to thank Kyle Petty first of all - he kept me in the race early on. We were so far behind, but he backed up and helped us draft.
"With two to go, [the team] told me do not get off the bottom. Everybody always ends up getting beat if they go to the top. Harvick went in there, he beat on me, and I have never seen so many cars run into each other on a restart in my life. But I can't say enough great things for the whole Miccosukee Resorts Monte Carlo. It was great and this was a great job for our team."
![Juan Pablo Montoya (Texaco Havoline Dodge) leads Mike Wallace (Miccosukee Resorts Chevrolet) at Daytona [pic credit: image.net]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/289397.jpg)
