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Filed under: Penske Racing, Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Brian Keselowski was still sitting in his race car on Daytona International Speedway's pit road well after the checkered flag when his little brother Brad leaned in for a hug and a congratulatory word. It wasn't a victory, but the Brothers Keselowski provided the unquestionable feel-good story of Thursday's Daytona 500 qualifying races.

Driving a barely-sponsored, five-year-old race car, Brian Keselowski will make his debut in the Daytona 500 Sunday, thanks to the kindest shove he ever received from the little brother he used to wrestle as a kid.

After spinning early in Thursday's Gatorade Duel qualifier, Brad Keselowski, 27, fell to the rear of the field and had to drive his No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge back up through the pack.

On his way, he dropped the famous Penske Racing "Blue Deuce" in behind Brian, 29, and literally pushed -- and willed -- his big brother's wayward No. 4 Dodge forward during the second half of the race. Brian finished fifth, Brad seventh, and for the first time in their lives, they will have the opportunity to compete against one another in NASCAR's Super Bowl.

"Oh, my God,'' an emotional Brian Keselowski said after climbing from his car. "He's got to be the best pusher here. ... I've watched him push others for the past three years and to push me into the Daytona 500 today. .. ''

"I'm gonna ask Roger (Penske) to help him out with a little better motor,'' Brad Keselowski joked afterward.

 

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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Media Watch

It's a safe bet that you won't be seeing Darrell Waltrip holding hands with Tony Kornheiser and singing "Kum Ba Yah" anytime soon, not that you were likely to anyway.

But the chances got even more remote when, during his show, "Pardon The Interruption," Kornheiser said Tuesday he had spoken to someone who said there was a "60 percent" chance that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had qualified and won the pole position for Sunday's Daytona 500 with a car that was not up to code and that NASCAR officials had looked the other way.

Needless to say, Waltrip, a FOX race analyst, took umbrage with Kornheiser's off the cuff statements and said so during a conference call to promote Daytona coverage Thursday.

 

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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- As NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams were packing up their equipment from Sunday's Daytona 500 pole qualifying session, NASCAR officials issued a technical bulletin aimed at keeping the cars from the 206-mph, two-car drafts that dominated Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout 75-lap non-points race.

"I thought it was cool at the beginning, medium in the middle and when they hit 206, I wasn't thinking of the race anymore, I was thinking what we needed to do in the next couple days,'' NASCAR Vice President for Competition Robin Pemberton said of Saturday's race,

In response to the increasing speeds and two-car breakaways, NASCAR has regulated the front grille opening on all the cars to 2 1/2-inches by 20-inches and it will install a pressure relief valve in the water cooling system. Pemberton said the idea is to decrease the temperature that the engine water will boil. Some cars could run water as hot as 290-300 degrees. Pemberton would like to get that temperature down to 250 degrees.

Cars shouldn't be able to run in the two-car pack for a sustained period of time for fear of overheating, thus making it less likely they will reach speeds upwards of 200 mph like they did Saturday night.

Although NASCAR did not change the size of the carburetor restrictor plate, Pemberton said that remains an option and didn't rule out other technical changes in advance of the Feb. 20 season-opening Daytona 500. Officials are looking to see what the racing is like in the Gatorade Duel 150-mile qualifying races on Thursday. They issued the technical bulletin Sunday so teams will have a chance to make the necessary changes before NASCAR Speedweeks resumes with a practice session on Wednesday morning.

"The speeds are high because everyone did their job,'' Pemberton told reporters in a nearly abandoned Daytona garage late Sunday afternoon. "The track with the paving, Goodyear, the teams have done a great job and now we're (NASCAR) in the fold and trying to reel some of that back in. And we have the support of the race teams.

"There's a lot of pressure here,'' he continued. "I can't even begin to tell you the pressure from a large group of people that are expecting us to get it right (for the Daytona 500).''

 

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Filed under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Chevrolet, Daytona Int'l Speedway, Chase for the Sprint Cup, Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The roar from the Daytona International Speedway crowd confirmed it. On a brisk but sunny afternoon, all seemed right with NASCAR nation. Let the 2011 season begin.

The sport's favorite son, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start his No. 88 AMP Energy Chevrolet from the pole position for the Feb. 20 Daytona 500 after posting the fastest lap of qualifying (186.089 mph) Sunday on the newly-paved 2.5-mile track. It is Earnhardt's first superspeedway pole and comes 10 years after his father, the legendary seven-time NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt, was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500 -- a fact not lost on a largely sentimental crowd cheering him on Sunday.

Earnhardt's Hendrick Motorsports teammate, three-time Daytona 500 winner Jeff Gordon completes the other half of one of the most popular starting front rows in recent 500 memory. Rookie Trevor Bayne was a surprise third-place qualifier for the iconic Woods Brothers Racing team. Richard Childress Racing teammates Paul Menard and Clint Bowyer rounded out the top-five fastest speeds.

Only the front row is set for the race. The remaining portion of the 43-car field will be filled out according to the finishing order in Thursday's Gatorade Duel 150-mile qualifying races. Each of the Duels starting lineups will be assigned according to the qualifying results.

The last driver to win the Daytona 500 from the pole was Dale Jarrett in 2000.

"We're fired up,'' said Earnhardt, who started second and finished second in last year's 500. "I had a great car today. I didn't have a whole lot to do about it (winning the pole), just held on. The power and the body does all the work.

"It obviously gives you the idea you've got a great car. But anybody can win the race. The main thing for me is it takes the pressure off the (Gatorade Duel) qualifier, I don't have to worry about where I finish and I can just go out there and have fun.''

As for the timing of his first pole at the track coming on the 10-mark of his father's tragic death, Earnhardt deferred the irony.

"I'm here to race,'' Earnhardt said. "I understand the situation and I look forward to seeing how people remember and honor my father. But I don't really get into the hypothetical, fairy-tale ending stuff. I just need to focus on my job and what gets me closer to victory lane on Sunday.''

 

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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Crashes, NASCAR

It was the end of the 1995 Winston Cup season, and Jeff Gordon -- "Wonder Boy" -- was the new NASCAR champion, set to be formally crowned at the annual banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

High up in his lavish suite on the 36th floor, a day before the banquet, the runner-up, Dale Earnhardt, sat down with me and five other motorsports writers for an interview. I was doing a profile of him for Car and Driver, ready to ask him broad, overarching questions about his career, his life and his place in the sport. (Earnhardt and his wife, Teresa, are shown above at his seventh championship banquet in 1994).

It was a time of rapid expansion in a booming sport, with even bigger changes looming. NASCAR was talking about racing in Japan. Bruton Smith, on the fast track to becoming a billionaire, had gone public with Speedway Motorsports, Inc., in February 1995 and would open Texas Motor Speedway in 1997 and Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 1998.

Earnhardt was 44, having completed his 17th full season in the NASCAR Winston Cup series. Less than two weeks earlier, the two-time defending Cup champion (only his 1992 hiccup interrupted what could have been Earnhardt's own five-in-a-row string) had faced an all-but-insurmountable, 147-point deficit to Gordon going into the final race at Atlanta.

Gordon did his best to choke, stumbling to a 32nd-place finish, 14 laps down, but had such a large points lead it was all over on lap 61, when the 24-year-old rising star led a lap to clinch the title. Earnhardt, meanwhile, drove like a man possessed, and 19 laps later, made one of the classic moves of his career, passing four cars in one fell swoop in turns three and four to blast from fourth place to the lead.

Earnhardt won that race in a runaway -- his fifth victory of the year -- and even though he didn't win the title, it was a vintage Earnhardt year. He won the second Brickyard 400 in August and then at Bristol drove like a wild man, barging past anyone and everyone in his way until he got to leader Terry Labonte at the finish and wrecked him, too, though Labonte won it while crashing.

Earnhardt finished the season with 10 straight top-10s -- eight of those top fives, including two victories -- but couldn't catch Gordon. The Intimidator was done in by his two DNFs, both at Michigan, including a crash in June that injured his neck and shoulders and left him sore right up to the point of this interview on Nov. 30, 1995. But he was a happy man that day, secure in his life and his sport and still king of his domain, even as the upstart kid was challenging his supremacy.

 

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Filed under: Tony Stewart, Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Crashes, FanHouse Exclusive, NASCAR

More often than you'd guess, Tony Stewart calls up the YouTube video of his wild, death-defying crash in the closing laps of the 2001 Daytona 500. But not for reasons you might think.

In the short video clip, he watches his orange No. 20 get hit from behind on the massive Daytona International Speedway backstretch, turning it directly toward 200-mph oncoming traffic. As the rear of Stewart's Chevrolet catches air and starts to launch vertically, cars take evasive action.

That's where Stewart pauses the video. He even has a still photograph of this very moment (right).

Just as Stewart's car lifts off the ground -- seconds before he endures violent barrel rolls and smashes into a half-dozen cars -- the black No. 3 Chevrolet escapes through the smoke and frenzy unscathed. Its driver, Dale Earnhardt, heads to the front of the field to contend for the win. As usual.

"That's the part that bothers me the most,'' Stewart explained in an exclusive interview with AOL FanHouse, speaking in depth about that fateful Feb. 18, 2001 afternoon when NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt was killed on the final lap of the Daytona 500.

"It's like, if I could have just nicked him on the way by, would it have changed things just enough to keep his accident later from happening? There's no way anyone would ever wreck and think about hitting someone else believing it would do any good. I was along for the ride.

---

 

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Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, Chase for the Sprint Cup, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- NASCAR President Mike Helton, Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton and Sprint Cup Series director John Darby held a competition update news conference Friday at Daytona International Speedway, confirming that the sanctioning body is looking at a "simpler" points system that would be introduced in all three national series for the 2011 season.

Speaking to reporters during downtime from a three-day preseason test session at the Daytona Beach track, the trio spoke on a wide range of issues. First, Helton made the news official that drivers must now select only one of the three national series to earn points toward a championship. He also indicated NASCAR was considering changes to the 1, 3 and 7:30 p.m. race start times introduced this past year.

Pemberton said that the proposed fuel injection systems would not be used this season but are progressing well in tests and Darby explained that the introduction of ethanol to fuel this year was actually an easier transition than when NASCAR switched from leaded to unleaded fuel in 2008.

The hot topic, unquestionably, was a change to the points system -- which would be the first since NASCAR formed in 1958 -- even if none of the officials would confirm what the new format might look like.

"We're in the middle of the conversations, telling the competitors where our mind is,'' Helton said. "The goal for some time is to create a points system that is easy to understand, easy to explain, easy to talk about but also be credible at the end of the season. So it's a function of taking the current one that has established credibility and come up with one that you can sit and have a conversation with someone and they say, 'well, that's pretty simple.' ''

"We're close. And we're getting a lot of good feedback from the drivers about tweaks that would go into that.''

 

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Filed under: David Reutimann, Martin Truex Jr., Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Testing, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- If a few hours of testing the new pavement on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway is any indication, NASCAR drivers say fans can expect an even more action-packed, unpredictable Daytona 500 than usual. And that's saying a lot.

The prevailing opinion during Thursday's first test session was that the spanking-new, $20 million paving job is going to create one of the most wide-open 500s in recent history. Drivers praised the smoothness of the circuit and say it has created an even playing field between the veterans who knew all of the nuances and the new drivers not afraid to lift in a four-wide draft through the corners.

"It's just going to be wild,'' said Carl Edwards, who was 22nd fastest of the 40 drivers in town for the three-day test session. "The track is so smooth and has so much grip that there's no telling what people will try. You know the last lap is going to be insane.''

Michael Waltrip Racing drivers David Reutimann and Martin Truex Jr. led four Toyotas (pictured above) at the top of Thursday's speed chart. Reutimann's top speed was clocked at 195.780 mph and Truex was just a tick off at 195.776 mph.

Red Bull Racing teammates Brian Vickers and Kasey Kahne were next fastest. This was Vickers' first official test since being sidelined most of last season with a blood clot. Kahne, who moves to Red Bull this season, is coming off double-knee surgery in the off-season.

Tony Stewart turned in the fifth-fastest lap in his Chevrolet, followed by the Chevys of Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer and defending 500 winner Jamie McMurray.

 

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Filed under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Daytona Int'l Speedway, NASCAR Testing, Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt, Jr. spent a portion of his lunch break Thursday visiting with reporters at Daytona International Speedway, where his No. 88 AMP Energy Chevrolet was a respectable 11th fastest in the first morning session of a three-day test for the Feb. 20 Daytona 500.

This year's 53rd running of the Daytona 500 marks 10 years since his father, NASCAR's seven-time champ Dale Earnhardt, was killed on the last lap of NASCAR's biggest race. And while fans and the racing media are paying special attention to the sad milestone, Earnhardt said he thinks about his dad every day anyway.

"You think about your parents all the time,'' Earnhardt said, alternately bowing his head and then looking off in the distance, as he endured the inevitable questions. "I think about him and my mother all the time, especially getting back to racing.''

Earnhardt said his father would approve of the new $20 million pavement job gracing Daytona's 2.5-mile high banks. This week's test is the first time the majority of teams have tried the new surface. But Earnhardt didn't appear as concerned about the challenges of a new race surface as much as his desire to get out of a competition rut.

Earnhardt hasn't won a race in two and a half years and his 21st place finish in the 2010 standings was the second-worst of his career. The worst was a 25th-place ranking in 2009. Earnhardt will break in his third crew chief in as many years with NASCAR powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports. Steve Letarte -- formerly Jeff Gordon's crew chief -- will now lead Earnhardt's No. 88 team, which will share a shop with teammate and five-time reigning Sprint Cup Series champ Jimmie Johnson.

"I feel good about the position I'm in now and I feel pretty confident about it and I'm looking forward to going into the season and working hard for it,'' Earnhardt said. "We'll just see how it goes.

"When you're running good you can put up with about anything. It's not fun being on the radar when you're running like crap. But last year we sort of fell off the radar altogether.

 

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Filed under: Crew Chiefs, NASCAR Testing, NASCAR

Teams will be issued smaller restrictor plates for NASCAR's upcoming Jan. 20-22 Goodyear Tire Test at Daytona International Speedway. And at least one Sprint Cup Series crew chief thinks it's a good idea to slow the cars on the newly paved 2.5-mile superspeedway.

"I think the decision was made to slow down the speeds because the speeds were too high at the first test,'' said Pat Tryson, veteran crew chief of the Michael Waltrip Racing No. 56 NAPA Auto Parts Toyota.

"It's a good move on the side of safety because no one wants to see a car go airborne at the potential speeds that could be generated with the plate they had last month. It will be better for the driver and better for the fans in the stands. Safety always comes first.''

The new carburetor restrictor plate will have a 29/32-inch hole compared to the 30/32-inch hole the cars used last month in the first major test session on the fresh pavement. Speeds reached 197 mph in December with 17-car drafts.

"By slowing down the cars, it will make the draft bigger and tighter,'' Tryson said. " Before with a little more power, the cars would spread out a little bit. I think now, we can expect to see the cars a lot closer together and more in one pack versus two, three or four.

"It's going to make for some great racing for sure because I expect to see more three, maybe four-wide racing at Daytona which is exactly what we saw at Talladega Superspeedway. It's going to be a lot of fun for everyone to watch."

 

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