(Following a crash in Wednesday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice Dale Earnhardt Jr will now start from the back of the grid as he will have to use a different car).

Dale Earnhardt Jr will start from pole position in the Daytona 500 NASCAR season-opener on Sunday. Earnhardt beat Hendrick Chevrolet team-mate Jeff Gordon to pole last Sunday afternoon with a lap of 48.36 seconds, averaging 186.09mph. Daytona’s track record was set back in 1987 by Bill Elliott, who lapped the high-banked 2.5-mile tri-oval in the Elliott family Ford in 42.783sec (210.364mph) at a time when there were no restrictor plates in NASCAR.

This is Earnhardt’s first Daytona 500 pole and the race will be his 400th NASCAR Sprint Cup start. Dale Jr is by far NASCAR’s most popular driver, winning the award the last eight consecutive years, so his presence on pole should help draw a big crowd and TV ratings for the race.

Saturday night’s non-championship Budweiser Shootout for last year’s race and pole winners was won by Kurt Busch in one of Roger Penske’s Dodges. Incredibly, this was 2004 champion Busch’s first win at Daytona and came in his debut aboard the yellow Shell/Pennzoil car he’s racing this year. In the closing laps Busch was running third amid the leading four-car train and he timed the run to the chequered flag off turn four perfectly, pulling out to draft past leaders Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin on the high side.

Last year’s 500 winner Jamie McMurray helped Busch by precisely following the Penske driver’s move. McMurray pushed Busch past Newman, as Hamlin tried to pass Newman at the bottom of the banking. Hamlin crossed the line a few millimetres ahead but went down onto the apron and below the yellow line – an illegal move in NASCAR. Thus Busch took the win from McMurray, with Newman finishing third and Hamlin moved back to 12th, classified as the last driver to complete the full 75 laps.

Twenty-four cars started the Shootout, which was the first NASCAR race on the repaved Daytona track. Practice and qualifying speeds remained similar to recent years but the drivers quickly discovered that they could run 20mph quicker in a two-car draft. Everyone searched for a ‘buddy’ to work with as the race wore on, and Busch found the perfect man in McMurray.

“He stuck with us and had an unbelievable amount of power to push us and keep us in the mix,” said Busch. “When you have a friend like that with this two-car draft, that’s what it takes. It’s an unbelievable experience to try to manage the cars in front and the car behind in this whole new game.”

For 23 years NASCAR’s races at the Daytona and Talladega superspeedways have been run with restrictor plates, cutting power almost in half. It’s a game the drivers dislike but have accepted and learned to adapt to. The fresh pavement at Daytona has reshuffled the deck again, which is just fine with NASCAR, where ‘the show’ is what it’s all about. Next weekend’s 53rd running of the Daytona 500 is unlikely to provide any kind of preview of the rest of the season, but will almost surely provide a surprise or different winner to be determined in the race’s closing seconds.

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Chip Ganassi’s Grand-Am team added to its already stunning record in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona last weekend when its pair of BMW-powered Riley Daytona Prototypes finished one-two. Defending Grand-Am champions Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas shared the winning car with Graham Rahal and Joey Hand, while Scott Dixon/Juan Pablo Montoya/Dario Franchitti/Jamie McMurray drove Ganassi’s second car. This was Ganassi’s fourth Rolex 24 win but only its first one-two. The team scored three straight wins in 2006-08 and finished runner-up in 2009-10.

Last weekend’s sweep further embellishes Ganassi’s reputation. His teams scored successive wins in last year’s Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400, and now the Rolex 24. Some people are calling it ‘The Chip Slam’. Grand-Am team leader Pruett, by the way, now has four Daytona 24 Hours wins to his name and has been on the podium in 14 of his 26 starts in the race.

Ganassi’s previous Rolex 24 wins came with Lexus (Toyota) engines, but Chip’s Grand-Am team switched last year to BMW power. Pruett and Rojas won the championship for BMW last season and have now scored the German manufacturer’s first Daytona victory since 1976, when Brian Redman/John Fitzpatrick/Peter Gregg won the 24 Hours in a factory BMW 3.5 CSL.

Neither of Ganassi’s cars enjoyed trouble-free runs last weekend. Montoya used his NASCAR fender-banging style to good effect on a number of occasions, but that also meant his crew had to twice change the car’s nose. Joey Hand made his debut with Ganassi’s team and did an excellent job in the winning car. Last year he drove for Bobby Rahal’s BMW GT team in the American Le Mans Series and has served a long apprenticeship in open wheel and sports cars. Hand lapped as quickly at Daytona as any of Ganassi’s drivers, and recovered well from a Sunday morning pit penalty after he was mistakenly waved out too early and hit one of his used tyres.

An indication of the thorough professionalism of Ganassi’s team was a decision during the race’s second hour to change the gear clusters in both cars. Warmer weather than anticipated and a change in wind direction meant both Ganassi cars were hitting their rev-limiters on the banking, so each car was brought in under successive yellows to remove the short gears and install a new stack of ratios.

Finishing third behind Ganassi’s cars were last year’s winners. The Action Express team ran two Riley-Porsches this year with João Barbosa/Terry Borcheller/Max Papis/Christian Fittipaldi finishing a strong third after the team’s other car was delayed by a few incidents. Martin Brundle/Mark Blundell/Mark Patterson/Zak Brown were an excellent fourth aboard United Autosports’ Riley-Ford run by Mike Shank Racing (see Damien Smith’s blog).

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Sunday’s Brickyard 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Indianapolis was a heartbreaker for Juan Pablo Montoya. For the second year in a row Montoya dominated the race, only to crash in the closing laps after a fateful mistake to take on four tyres rather than two in the last round of pitstops. Stuck in the pack, Montoya tried too hard and hit the wall.

While Juan drove his wrecked car into Gasoline Alley his Earnhardt-Ganassi team-mate Jamie McMurray came through to win, just as he did in February’s Daytona 500. Heartbreak for Montoya resulted in celebration for the team as Chip Ganassi became the first team owner to win the Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400 in the same year. “My heart goes out to Juan,” said Ganassi. “He had a great day. But this is a big, big day for Jamie, our sponsors and our team. It’s incredible. I need oxygen. I don’t know what to say.”

At one stage near the end of the race, before the final pitstops, Montoya and McMurray were running one-two. “Juan obviously had the dominant car and it’s horrible the luck that he’s having,” said McMurray. “I’m a big believer in fate, and when Juan was leading and I was second I thought, ‘This is just the way it’s meant to be. I won the Daytona 500, Dario won the Indy 500 and Juan’s going to win this race.’ I really thought it was his day.”

McMurray and Ganassi’s joy aside, the big story at Indianapolis was the many empty grandstand seats. Ticket sales for the Brickyard 400 have been in decline for many years, but this year witnessed a sharp drop, with between 80,000-100,000 of the Speedway’s 257,000 seats remaining empty on a hot, humid race day.

The decline in attendance is not unique to Indianapolis, of course. Most NASCAR races have suffered a steady fall in ticket sales over the past four or five years. NASCAR peaked in 2005 with more than 4.6 million spectators for all 36 races. Three years later NASCAR’s annual draw totalled 4.2 million, followed by a more precipitous fall last year to 3,892,000. Based on this year’s first 19 races a further decline of 300,000 is projected, down almost 30 per cent from 2005. TV ratings are down in equal proportions. TV viewership has been in decline for three or four years, and has lost another 10 per cent of the audience this year.

Responding to feedback from a 12,000-member fan council NASCAR has made a series of rule changes over the past 18 months. They’ve thrown out the little rear wing in favour of a more traditional spoiler, introduced double-file restarts and the guarantee of green-white-checker finishes rather than ending races under a yellow. The move has produced plenty of wild finishes and multi-car wrecks, as has NASCAR’s recently-minted ‘Have at it boys’ philosophy.

Some tracks have begun to cut ticket prices this year, yet the decline in attendance and TV ratings continues. Everyone is wondering what’s it all about. Is it the economy, or the bland, spec car-like ‘Car of Tomorrow’? Or is it the poor performance in recent years of Dale Earnhardt Jr, by far NASCAR’s most popular driver?

Everyone is searching for a silver bullet to recapture NASCAR’s magic formula. In fact, NASCAR’s third-generation boss Brian France says he’s prepared to try almost anything, including knock-out eliminations with a final, one-race play-off for the championship. Would that the solution was so simple.

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Kevin Harvick scored a textbook win in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race on the giant Talledega superspeedway in Alabama. Over the closing laps he kept his nose within inches of Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray’s tail and pulled out to pass in the final quarter-mile. Harvick got McMurray’s car loose as he made the move and, during the resulting wobble, he eased by to win by about two feet, or 0.012 seconds. The move was perfectly timed, allowing Kevin to break a 116-race winless streak.

Harvick’s last victory was at the 2007 Daytona 500, while team owner Richard Childress last celebrated a win at Talladega in 2000 with the late, great Dale Earnhardt. Harvick replaced Earnhardt at Richard Childress Racing (RCR) after Dale Sr was killed at Daytona in ’01, and he’s been the team leader since then. It was announced last week that Harvick’s sponsors, Shell and Pennzoil, are leaving RCR at the end of the year to move to Roger Penske’s NASCAR team, so last weekend’s win was particularly sweet.

“Everything played out perfectly for us today,” said Harvick. “We had a plan to ride in the back, wait for 50 laps and really push forward after that. It’s great to see a finish like that – and we broke [our winning] drought too.”

McMurray said of Harvick’s eleventh-hour pass: “I thought I was low enough that he couldn’t get underneath me. So I was guarding the outside and when he pulled to the left it pulled my car around. As soon as I realised he’d got underneath I was worried about side-drafting him to the line. You live for those moments. It was a great race. We’re just proud to finish second today.”

McMurray’s Earnhardt-Ganassi team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya battled for the lead near the end of the race but wound up third. Championship leader Jimmie Johnson crashed in the closing laps and was classified 31st, but retained his title lead by 29 points from Harvick. For the second race in a row Johnson was involved in a fender-bashing incident with team-mate Jeff Gordon. Late in the race Johnson moved down to block Gordon as the latter tried to steam past. Both cars lost momentum and fell back, triggering a multi-car accident.

“I got a huge push down the back straightaway and I was 10mph faster than anybody,” said Gordon. “The number 48 is testing my patience, I can tell you. It takes a lot to make me mad and I am p***** right now. I don’t know what it is between me and him.”

This was the first race run on a superspeedway in two years with a traditional NASCAR-style spoiler rather than the rear wing originally adopted for the ‘Car of Tomorrow’. The race featured a record 88 lead changes among no fewer than 29 drivers, prompting Gordon to say: “I thought it was a heck of a race. There were times when it got a little wild, but I don’t think you could ask for a better race. So I applaud the [decision to introduce the traditional-style] rear spoiler.”

In NASCAR, keeping it simple and a little antique is always the best solution.

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Order was restored in NASCAR as defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson bounced back from failing to finish the Daytona 500 to score the 48th win of his career in Sunday’s 500-mile race at the California Speedway.

Johnson was the man to beat in California, leading 101 of the race’s 250 laps, but he was running no better than fifth in the closing stages when a yellow flag came out as he was pulling into his pit for his final stop. The yellow was a stroke of luck, allowing him to rejoin the race in first place.

The final restart came with 26 laps to go and Johnson took off in the lead, chased hard by Richard Childress team-mates Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton. Harvick tried to pass Johnson with three laps to go but got sideways and brushed the wall, then spent the final laps battling for second place with Burton. Harvick edged Burton by a nose to lead the championship points.

“Today, fortune came our way,” Johnson admitted. “When we hit pitroad and the caution came out it gave us track position. We lost the handle on the car in the second half of the race. We were making gains and coming back but a lot of other guys were ahead of us and it was going to be tough to pass them. But then we got that break and I drove my butt off.

“We finally got the car turning at the end of the race,” Johnson added. “It was a little loose and Harvick was coming, but then he hit the wall. Kevin and I raced really hard all day and had a lot of fun.”

Harvick had led 70 laps but lost track position in the middle of the race when he broke the pitlane speed limit, which earned him a drive-through penalty.

“The #48 saw me coming and he moved up the track,” said Harvick. “When I got behind him I lost the nose and got into the wall. But the car ran good all day and the crew did a great job. I got that speeding penalty on pitroad and we should never have been in that position, but we made it back up.”

Mark Martin was fourth in another Hendrick Chevrolet, followed by Joey Logano in one of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Toyotas. Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray qualified on pole, followed by Earnahardt-Ganassi team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya. McMurray didn’t enjoy a strong race, falling back at the start and eventually finishing 17th, while Montoya took the lead and set the pace through the opening 29 laps only to blow his engine.

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NASCAR’s season kicked off on Saturday with qualifying for this Sunday’s Daytona 500, followed by the Budweiser Shootout 75-lap non-points-scoring sprint race under the lights. Qualifying was swept by Hendrick Motorsports as veteran Mark Martin took pole and team-mate Dale Earnhardt Jr qualified on the outside front row. Thursday’s pair of 150-mile qualifying races will determine the rest of the field.

Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet operation is split into two separate shops, one for multiple champions Jimmie Johnson’s #48 car and Jeff Gordon’s #24, the other for Martin’s #5 and Earnhardt Jr’s #88. So last weekend’s qualifying performances were particularly sweet for the less well-lauded side of Hendrick’s team. And with restrictor plates cutting horsepower by almost half at Daytona, the drivers were quick to place all credit at the foot of Hendrick’s engine builders and bodymen.

“That was not an accomplishment of mine,” said Martin. “That was [crew chief] Alan [Gustafson] and all our guys, and to have Dale Jr on the front row just means we’re doing our stuff right.”

Added Dale Jr: “I got to thank the engine shop, mainly for the power, and all the guys in the bodyshop for making my car as slick as it is. Hendrick’s is a great organisation and the driver doesn’t have anything to do with it here at Daytona. It’s just all race car right there.”

Saturday night’s Bud Shootout was won by Kevin Harvick aboard one of Richard Childress Racing’s Chevrolets. Harvick beat Kasey Kahne’s Richard Petty Ford and Jamie McMurray’s Earnhardt-Ganassi Chevrolet after many of the favourites were taken out in accidents. Harvick believes he has a good combination for the 500 and is looking forward to Thursday’s qualifying races to get a better understanding of where everyone stacks up.

“Our handling package is fairly good,” he said. “Obviously, it’ll change as we go through the week because everything will shift to daytime temperatures. It was pretty cool tonight and there was probably a bit of added grip to what we’ll have during the 500 as rubber gets onto the race track. But our basic package is really good and tonight that’s what kept us up front.

“I wasn’t tending to one groove,” Harvick added. “I could run the top, bottom or middle and didn’t have to be picky about who I followed. I could go wherever I wanted, and that’s nice to have options like that. It lets you be pretty aggressive and this was an aggressive race. There was not a whole lot of thinking about what the consequences might be. It was all about whatever it took to go forward.”

Saturday afternoon’s 200-mile ARCA race was won by veteran Bobby Gerhart, who scored his sixth win at Daytona. Danica Patrick made her stock car debut in the race, qualifying 12th and finishing a respectable sixth after a collision with Nelson Piquet Jr. Piquet was also making his stock car debut and had to retire, but Patrick recovered and showed plenty of moxie by coming through the field to run with the leaders in the closing laps.

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This year’s Rolex 24 hours at Daytona produced a similar result to last year with a Brumos Porsche winning from one of Chip Ganassi’s two cars, but without 2009’s drama when Juan Pablo Montoya battled fiercely with David Donohue. The closing hours of this year’s race were disappointingly flat as the lead car driven by Terry Borcheller/Joao Barbosa/Mike Rockenfeller/Ryan Dalziel maintained a comfortable half-lap cushion over its only remaining challenger, Ganassi’s Riley-BMW driven by Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas/Justin Wilson/Max Papis. Wilson had to pit unexpectedly during the final hour when he felt a violent bang from beneath the car, enabling the Brumos Porsche to win by 52 seconds.

It was a classic long-distance victory in that the winning car was the only Daytona Prototype to run the race essentially trouble-free, although the drivers did have to struggle with a sticking throttle and clutch failure. Faultless driving and pitwork were key to their success.

“I didn’t expect that we would be there at the end,” said Rockenfeller. “We were struggling with the handling most of the weekend but the team did a really good job to fix the car. We were pretty much changing everything on the set-up before the race. We didn’t know what to expect, but the car as perfect.”

Added Dalziel: “All four of us went into this race with a major unknown. We were pretty lost in practice but I knew if we could be reliable we’d be there at the end, and after the first couple of hours it was obvious we were fast. We never went off track or had any mechanical problems and I think this is a huge achievement for a new team.”

The winning Riley-Porsche was built and prepared at the Brumos team’s race shop in North Carolina under Mike Colluci’s direction, but the car was entered under the Action Express Racing moniker. The tough economic times compelled Brumos to lay off a number of employees at its dealerships last year, resulting in a decision to run just one rather than two Grand-Am cars in 2010. In turn the race team took the opportunity to build a different car powered by a Cayenne-based V8 built in California by the Lozano Brothers.

Built around a Riley chassis similar to last year’s winner and powered by a conventional Porsche engine, the new combination was turned out in off-white with a German flag down the middle. Colucci and Brumos also brought in veteran NASCAR crew chief and technical man Gary Nelson to help run the car.

Finishing third, four laps down, was the NPN Racing Riley-BMW driven by Scott Tucker/Ryan Hunter-Reay/Lucas Luhr/Richard Westbrook. Fourth, another 16 laps down, was Tracy Krohn’s Lola-Ford driven by Krohn/Nic Jonson/Ricardo Zonta/Colin Braun.

Among those out of luck were Ganassi’s second Riley-BMW driven by Montoya/Dario Franchitti/Scott Dixon/Jamie McMurray (above), which led more than 140 laps before blowing an engine. The Riley-Porsche of last year’s winner, Brumos Racing, blew its flat-six motor after 20 hours while defending Grand-Am champions Alex Gurney/Jon Fogarty and Daytona team-mates Jimmie Johnson (below)/Jimmy Vasser ran into a variety of problems, finally succumbing to a broken oil pump. Also out of luck were Wayne Taylor’s SunTrust Dallara-Ford and Mike Shank’s pair of Riley-Fords. This trio swept the top three places in qualifying but ran into various troubles in the race and finished fifth, sixth and seventh.

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Matt Kenseth and Jack Roush’s Roush Fenway Ford team may have been the only happy people in Daytona on Sunday night. Kenseth scored both his and Roush’s first Daytona 500 victory as well as his first win in more than a year after taking the lead from Elliott Sadler immediately before rain brought out the yellow flag with fifty-four laps to go. As Kenseth surged to the front to lead his only laps of the race Sadler’s Petty Dodge fell to fifth behind Kevin Harvick’s Childress Chevrolet, A.J. Allmendinger’s Petty Dodge and Clint Bowyer’s Childress Chevy.

A few minutes later the red flag waved and with the field parked in the pitlane NASCAR soon announced the race was over with 152 laps completed. So ended a very unsatisfactory afternoon and early evening for the fans after a yellow flag-filled race which saw most of the top contenders eliminated or delayed. Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon led most of the race but Busch was taken out in a multi-car accident after 125 of the scheduled 200 laps while Gordon lost a lap a little earlier when he was forced to stop under the green to replace badly worn tyres.

But it was the mêlée that took-out Busch and team-mate Denny Hamlin which changed the race’s complexion and turned it into a struggle among a brace of mid-fielders who had not featured until that point. The multi-car shunt was triggered by a barging match between Brian Vickers and Dale Earnhardt Jr., both of whom were a lap down. Earnhardt was able to continue without damage but Busch was eliminated on the spot while other top contenders like Hamlin, Jamie McMurray and Carl Edwards were seriously delayed by crash damage.

Earnhardt endured a particularly messy race, missing his pit on one occasion and then failing to get correctly into his pitbox during a later stop. These transgressions cost him a lap and he was trying hard to get to the front of the pack and unlap himself when the accident happened. Neither Busch, who led 88 laps, nor Vickers had any good words to say about Earnhardt.

“It’s unfortunate that a guy that’s messed up his whole day on pit road has to make our day worse,” Busch remarked. “It wasn’t our problem that he was a lap down and fighting with another lapped car. I don’t even know what they were fighting for because the outside lane was coming. Those cars just should have sat there and waited and got back in line when they could.

Busch added that he was “100 percent confident” that he was going to win the race.

Commented Vickers: “My goal was to keep Junior behind me and I went to block him. I beat him to the yellow line and then he just turned us. He hit me the first time on the way down, which is fine. We all do that. Then when he came back up the track he just hooked me in the left rear. It’s kind of sad. To wreck somebody intentionally like that in front of the entire field is really kind of dangerous.”

Earnhardt insisted the accident wasn’t intentional. “I was trying to get my lap back and I had a really, really good run on Brian,” Dale Jr. said. “He was side-by-side with somebody for the lead and I went on the inside and he drove me down almost into the grass below the line and I didn’t have much control over the car at that point. I was just trying to get back on the racetrack and I hit him in the quarter panel and spun him out. It was accidental. I didn’t want to wreck the field. I was trying to get back up on the racetrack.”

Meanwhile, 2003 NASCAR champion Kenseth was delighted to score his first win in any race at Daytona. “I’m just unbelievably grateful for the opportunity,” Kenseth said. “I was a little nervous because Elliott and Reed (Sorenson) and Allmendinger were all (Richard Petty Enterprises) team-mates lined-up there. But I was able to get up beside Elliott and then make the pass. Our car was a fair amount quicker than his and I was able to get a run on him.

“We raced hard all day,” Kenseth added. “I want to thank the fans who came out to watch. It’s a great pleasure racing in front of the greatest race fans in the world. It’s really unbelievable to be the winner of the Daytona 500. I don’t feel like I’m the best at (restrictor) plate racing. I tend to make too many mistakes, so to put it all together today and win the Daytona 500 is very satisfying.”

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