Mammoth Blog

A huge fireworks show shot off from the Daytona backstretch moments after the true pyrotechnics took place on the track's front stretch.

Tony Stewart, passed on the second-to-last lap of the race, charged back on the final lap of the Coke Zero 400, smacking into Kyle Busch as he barreled to the finish line, sending Busch into an uncontrolled spin.

Stewart zipped past to roll under the checkered flag as bedlam broke out behind him, winning the race as cars went spinning through the grass and along the wall.

Busch tried to block Stewart after taking the lead on Lap 158, and was doing a good job. Busch held the lead coming down the stretch, but when he went low, Stewart went high and made contact, sending Busch spinning into the wall. Busch ended up riding the wall before coming on top of Kasey Kahne's car just past the finish line.

Stewart said he didn't want to hit Busch, but didn't have much choice.

''I don't know if I was real proud of that, but I don't know what else I could do,'' said Stewart, who won the race from the pole. ``I went where I had to go, he went where he had to go. He helped me the whole race, so you hate to see him get wrecked like that.

``He went to block us and we were already there. That doesn't mean you like it. You don't want to see him wreck, want him to finish good. But we weren't going to give it to him. If I did something wrong, I'm sorry. That's not the way you want to win these things.''

Stewart's car was strong all night, as he led throughout the latter portions of the race. Stewart, who now has three Cup wins at Daytona -- all coming in the July race -- didn't have a bad pit stop as his crew helped him win all seven of his stops.

Jimmie Johnson ended up finishing second, with Denny Hamlin taking third.

''These guys [on the crew] did an awesome job,'' Stewart said. ``They had awesome stops all night long.''

Stewart, who led for 86 of the 160 laps, was leading a four-car pack consisting of Busch, Hamlin and Johnson down the stretch.

On the next-to-last lap, Busch went up against the wall on the front stretch and took the lead as the white flag came out. It was a lead that wouldn't hold up, as Stewart bulled his way through. Busch, because of the crash, ended up finishing 14th. He was taken to the infield care center after coming out of his window, with his brother Kurt saying he was OK.

Kyle Busch declined to comment to TV reporters from TNT after the race. Jeff Burton made a challenge late in the race, pulling in front of the field on Lap 127. Just two laps later, Burton was out of contention after making slight contact, losing tire pressure as a result and being forced to pit on green to change it. That put him back at the end of the field -- 28th at the time -- a lap back. Burton got back on the lead lap on the caution that happened on Lap 145.

''One bad set of tires,'' Burton told his crew, ``ruined the whole day.''

There was a 13-car incident just after the midway point of the race, with those involved all but knocked out of contention after sustaining body damage. One of those drivers was Jeff Gordon, who started the race on the front row alongside pole-sitter Stewart.

Gordon came into the pits a number of times after the wreck to get things banged out as he sustained damage to the right front; Gordon ended up 28th. Ryan Newman, who started seventh, was also effected and finished 19th.

The crash started on Lap 77 when David Stremme was tapped by Kasey Kahne in heavy traffic along the wall and spun out, smashing into Kahne as he tried to power his way past. When Stremme hit Kahne, the two caromed through traffic and set off a chain of events in which more than a dozen cars went smoking down the stretch as they tried to reel things in.

The struggling Dale Earnhardt Jr. was knocked out in the melee, his car hitting David Reutimann hard and stripping off some of Reutimann's sheet metal in the process. Earnhardt, who came into the race ranked 19th in the season standings, complained of handling problems early on but said his team seemingly had straightened things out.

''We just got it driving good and had it freed up,'' Earnhardt said after being knocked out because of contact for the second night in a row. He completed 58 laps in Friday's Nationwide race. ``It's a tough race for us.'' source>>>