NASCAR Penalizes Daytona Winner Tony Stewart, Two Nationwide Teams

Jeff Burton has had what he calls a “miserable” season. But on Saturday night, he was anything but miserable – thanks to a runner-up finish in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

“We’ve had a miserable year, and to get out of Daytona with a second-place finish, we ought to be happy,” Burton said. “... Hopefully it’s something that’ll kick start our year a little bit. It’s been a difficult year, and hopefully we can build on this.”

Greg Biffle climbed from his car and took a couple steps toward the door of his Roush Fenway Racing team’s transporter.

He turned back and looked up at the Daytona International Speedway scoring pylon. The No. 16, which had a chance to be on top just minutes earlier, was instead nowhere to be found.

Matt Kenseth had the most dominant car on Saturday night, but failed to close the deal at the end of NASCAR’s Coke Zero 400 after he was separated from teammate Greg Biffle on the last lap at Daytona International Speedway.

The two Roush Fenway Racing teammates led for a combined 124 laps, often in tandem. When pit stops trapped the duo to the back of the field after a lap 124 accident, the two reconnected and drove themselves back to the front on the outside – a tactic no other group could utilize throughout the night.

While it appeared all of the drivers purposefully spent much of Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 just riding around Daytona International Speedway, that wasn’t actually the case – at least according to Dale Earnhardt Jr.

“I don’t know what everybody (watching) thought was happening, but the whole race...it looked like riding, but we were on the mat, pushing the guy in front of us, not going anywhere,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We weren’t taking it easy, we just couldn’t do anything.

Tony Stewart had an answer for the dominant pair of Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle.

In winning Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway, Stewart side-drafted and separated Kenseth and Biffle, who had surged into the lead during a two-lap run to the finish, then pulled away for his fourth win in the last eight July races at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

Austin Dillon will stand by as a possible relief driver for Kevin Harvick in Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400, the NASCAR Wire Service has learned.

Harvick and his wife, DeLana Harvick, are expecting their first child, and there’s a possibility the baby may be born Saturday, which also is DeLana Harvick’s birthday.

Showers and storms have been close to Daytona International Speedway the last two days but NASCAR managed to miss out on the rain. Hoping the luck doesn’t run out tonight for the Coke Zero 400 NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series Race.

The forecast remains the same for today, hot and humid with hit or miss afternoon showers and storms. This is very typical weather for Florida weather in July. Highs will once again get into the low 90s later this afternoon. As the land heats up faster than the surrounding water, sea breezes begin to form. This sea breeze and other boundaries cause those pop up afternoon showers and storms to form.

It’s NASCAR race night at Daytona International Speedway, and we’ve got the actual race start time, the starting lineup and some other facts about Saturday’s race for you below.

What time does the race start Saturday? Former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden is the grand marshal for Saturday’s race and will give the command to fire engines at 7:41 p.m. EDT. Following a couple pace laps, the Daytona race will begin at 7:53 p.m. EDT. So if you want to skip the pre-race show and just tune in for the actual event itself, flip on your TV set at 7:53 p.m.

Like an adult bringing kids to Disney World for the first time, Kurt Busch showed his Phoenix Racing team the wonders of a NASCAR Victory Lane on Friday night after winning the Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway.

Busch beamed after winning on a wild night, sitting in the media center alongside crew chief Nick Harrison – who won in NASCAR for the first time and had never done a post-race news conference before.

Danica Patrick entered Friday night’s Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway confident and thinking it was her best chance to score her maiden NASCAR win.

But her night came to an unexpected end on lap 84, when Patrick was left with nowhere to go when Jeffrey Earnhardt was turned off of Turn 2. In the ensuing chaos, Patrick’s car veered sideways and savagely hit the backstretch wall.

With a strong push from defending NASCAR Nationwide Series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kurt Busch won a wild Subway Jalapeno 250 Friday night at Daytona International Speedway, as Austin Dillon was turned sideways and wrecked in the tri-oval as Busch crossed the finish line.

Stenhouse came home second, followed by Michael Annett, who was pushing Dillon during a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race one lap beyond its scheduled distance of 100 laps.

There’s a habit Austin Dillon’s NASCAR Nationwide Series team needs to break -- immediately -- if the driver of the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet hopes to win the series championship.

Bluntly, the No. 3 team needs to stop failing inspection. Dillon’s pole-winning time for Friday night’s Subway Jalapeno 250 at Daytona International Speedway was disallowed after inspectors found an open cooling hose into the cockpit of the car, a duct work violation that in theory would provide an aerodynamic advantage.

In an effort to improve the competition on the track, NASCAR is placing an emphasis on its Research and Development Center and giving it more autonomy, NASCAR CEO Brian France said Friday at Daytona International Speedway.

NASCAR believes that by splitting off the R&D Center from the competition department, advances can more easily be made.

Thirty-two times a year drivers are on a virtual island as they attempt to navigate their way to Victory Lane. However, that isn’t the case whenever the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series travels to Talladega or Daytona International Speedway the site of this weekend’s Coke Zero 400.

After all, to win at a restrictor-plate track usually requires having a partner to work with. Two-car drafts may be mostly dead due to NASCAR rule changes, but that’s likely still how the race will be won.

The weather forecast remains hot and humid with possible pop-up afternoon showers and storms for today and tomorrow’s NASCAR activities at Daytona International Speedway .

The skies will be mostly-to-partly-sunny with high temperatures in the lower 90s and humid. As the sea breeze sets up in the afternoon, these boundaries between cooler drier air and the warm humid air will once again cause showers and storms to pop up.

Denny Hamlin has experienced back problems for years, but the ones that sidelined him this week mark a new area of concern.

Hamlin is sitting out the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice sessions this weekend and skipping the Nationwide Series race due to back spasms triggered in last week’s Kentucky Speedway event. Hamlin also has torn and bulging disks in his back, he told reporters on Thursday at Daytona International Speedway.

Calling it “artificial” and a slippery slope that NASCAR doesn’t need to head down, Carl Edwards left no doubt where he stands on the idea of mandatory cautions when he spoke with the media Thursday at Daytona International Speedway.

“If you wanted to shorten the races or you wanted to do something, but just throwing a caution because the race is ‘boring’ to someone, I think that’s a dangerous road to go down, in my opinion,” Edwards said. “I think if somebody is good and they go out and win every race by a lap for a year, then they ought to be held up for that and say, ‘Hey, that’s great.’

Ever since Bruton Smith made his remarks last week about how NASCAR should implement mandatory cautions, I’ve been thinking: Wonder what ol’ Tony Stewart thinks about that idea?

Stewart, of course, is the one who sarcastically suggested Talladega should run Figure Eight races to spice things up. I thought he’d pan Smith’s idea, to be honest.

Remember all the chatter about NASCAR’s new rule affecting the rear sway bar? Before last week’s Kentucky race, drivers such as Brad Keselowski predicted the rule would be a “major game-changer.”

Some insiders felt teams like Hendrick Motorsports, who ran angled sway bars to much success, would supposedly be weakened – a change that could impact the resurgence of Dale Earnhardt Jr.

A sore back will prevent Denny Hamlin from participating in Thursday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Daytona International Speedway. The issue, which is said to be cramping muscles, also forced Hamlin to withdraw from Friday’s Nationwide Series race.

Hamlin’s teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, Joey Logano, will fill in during Cup practice and take some laps in Hamlin’s No. 11 car.

Saturday’s Coke Zero 400 marks the one year anniversary of David Ragan’s first and only NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win, and Ragan couldn’t be more energized to defend his title at Daytona International Speedway.

While the numbers don’t look especially positive, Ragan believes he’s maximized the potential of his current equipment and said Front Row is on the verge of a breakthrough in the season’s second half.

NASCAR has a longstanding practice of never taking away a national series win, even if the offending party is found to have committed a rules infraction during post-race inspection.

The belief of the sanctioning body is that fans deserve to know who won the race the moment the checkered flag flies. They prefer not to have the outcome lingering in the balance until post-race inspection has been completed, which can sometimes be up to a couple of hours after the race has ended.

Though Bruton Smith’s idea to implement mandatory cautions to spice up NASCAR races doesn’t have much support in the garage, at least one driver is speaking out in favor of the idea.

Greg Biffle said Thursday at Daytona he supports the concept of throwing periodic competition cautions if the races go green like they have in many instances this season.

Typical July weather is expected for this weekend’s NASCAR activities at Daytona International Speedway – hot and humid with pop-up showers and thunderstorms.

I know many are a little nervous seeing rain in a NASCAR Daytona weather forecast after what happened back in February when NASCAR kicked off the season on a Monday in prime time. Although these pop-up and scattered showers and storms each afternoon and evening can cause delays, I don’t expect the same kind of deluge that we saw back in February.