Friday evenings final practice session for Saturday's Bud Shootout was marred by a pair of accidents, which resulted in at least four drivers being forced to their back-up cars and another two, namely Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch landing themselves in hot water with NASCAR.
In the opening minutes of what was for all intents and purposes set to be a calm practice period Clint Bowyer tapped Ryan Newman into a spin going into turn three of the 2.5-mile
Daytona International Speedway as the majority of the 23 cars were running in a solid pack, trying to figure out how the ‘New Cars' would react in the draft on Saturday night.
Newman's #12 Penske Racing Dodge spun backwards into the outside wall directly into the path of Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon and the Ford's of David Gilliland and Bill Elliott. All five cars were significantly damaged and all bar Gilliland will be forced to use their back-up cars for Saturday's non-championship race.
Minutes later and the smoke was flying again as Kurt Busch appeared to pinch opening practice leader Tony Stewart into the outside wall, once again going into turn three. While Busch thoroughly pancaked the side of his #2 Penske Dodge against the outside wall Stewart half spun into the side of his own JGR teammate Denny Hamlin before straightening himself out and heading back to the pits. However the incident didn't end there as Busch then proceeded to ram the side of Stewart's car as the two headed back to pit road before speeding back to his garage, narrowly missing several of Stewart's crewmen in the process.
Needless to say NASCAR was quick to call for both drivers attendance to ‘the hauler' shortly afterwards.
Amidst the carnage Ganassi Racing's Reed Sorenson finished the session with the fastest time, a remarkable turnaround as the Dodge teams had been singularly unimpressive in first practice. Sorenson stopped the clocks in a best time of 46.906-seconds (191.873mph) to become the first driver to duck under the 47-second bracket since practice began.
![Tony Stewart - Home Depot/Joe Gibbs Chevrolet [pic credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/194769.jpg)
