Storming to victory

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Matt Kenseth felt a sense of urgency ripple through his body, so the veteran driver, with rain drops hitting his windshield on lap 146, dove outside around turn one of the Daytona International Speedway.

The move would either stick and he would take the lead in the 51st running of the Daytona 500, or he would slip and, at worst, fall back. Fortunately for the Roush Fenway Racing driver, the move stuck and, with a little help from Kevin Harvick, he passed Elliott Sadler for the lead. Half a lap later, the long-anticipated heavy rain began to fall and a caution came out when Aric Almirola spun.

The race would never start back up, sending Kenseth and his team into a wild celebration and handing owner Jack Roush his first Daytona 500 victory.

“I was real nervous, because Elliott had his teammates lined up with him,” said Kenseth, wiping away a combination of rain and tears. “I had it in my mind that I had to make the move then because of the rain. As I passed him, there actually were big rain drops on my windshield, so I had an idea the pass might have been for the win.”

Harvick, the 2007 winner, was second, followed by the first of three Richard Petty Motorsports drivers in the top 10, A.J. Allmendiger. Clint Bowyer was fourth, with Petty's Sadler fifth, followed by David Ragan, Michael Waltrip, and Tony Stewart in his Sprint Cup owner debut. Petty’s Reed Sorenson and Kurt Busch rounded out the top 10.

Kenseth, who was one of seven drivers who had to drop to the back of the 43-car field after going to a backup car, never led until the final lap. However, he was consistently in the top 10 and, more importantly, managed to escape several wrecks. The most damaging came on lap 123 when Brian Vickers and Dale Earnhardt Jr., each a lap down, were racing to become the first car a lap down when the two touched to trigger a nine-car pileup.

Caught up in the mess were three of the race's best cars, including Kyle Busch, who had led 88 laps to that point and was clearly the dominant car on the track.

“I'm 100 percent confident we would have won that race,” Busch said. “Those cars should have sat there and waited and got back in line when they could. Instead they were fighting for what, 40th?”

Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin and Roush’s Jamie McMurray were also heavily damanged in the wreck. The cars of Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards were also involved, and though neither was damaged severely, they never got back into the top 10. Johnson wound up 31st, with Edwards 18th.

With so many contenders either out or damaged, it opened the door for several surprise contenders to come forward. Up stepped Sadler, Allmendinger and Sorenson, who restarted the race on lap 133 first, second and fifth, respectively. With the expected rain in every team’s strategy, the racing suddenly became even more intense.

Kenseth used the next five laps to get to second before Paul Menard brought out the race's seventh caution on lap 138 when he was tapped from behind as a huge pack of cars checked up in front of him. Sadler, who did not have a ride until Gillette Evernham Racing and Petty Enterprises merged, remembers riding around under caution hoping the rain would increase.

“I'm not going to lie, I was getting pretty emotional in the car when I thought it was going to be called,” he said. “I was thinking about all that we’ve been through and how much fun it was going to be in victory lane. Now, to think I was half a lap from winning the Daytona 500, it’s hard to swallow.”

For Kenseth, who endured a winless 2008 season, the realization that he’s now a Daytona 500 winner was almost too much to handle.

“To be honest, it really hasn't sunk in yet,” he said. “It's pretty unbelievable to sit here and be the Daytona 500 champion. Yesterday, I was sitting in the motorhome and I was telling my wife that I was getting fed up with not winning. It was not like I had a bad feeling about today, but I don't consider myself to be very good on the plate tracks. And to be able to put it all together and win the Daytona 500 is just overwhelming.”