Erin Andrews, let’s don’t and say we did. She was ridiculous on pit road. 50 Cent seems to be having fun. James Franco seems extremely ‘not-in-the-mood’ for all of this. I wonder if he’s very hung over. He did his interview with Rutledge wearing huge sunglasses though its a cloudy day in Daytona.
I enjoyed the broadcast of the driver introductions, though I wish the camera work would’ve been more smooth and shown all of the drivers better. I love driver introductions.
Danica Patrick leads the field to the green flag. Jeff Gordon leads the first lap.
Caution is out on lap 27 for debris.
Caution on Lap 33 collecting Kasey Kahne, JPM, Harvick, Keselowski, Tony Stewart, KHarv, looks like Kyle Busch got into Kasey’s right corner and turned him. Jamie Mc and Casey Mears got some damage also in that incident. Looks like KyBu was being pushed from behind, Kenseth slowed up, which caused Jeff Gordon to slow up, so Kasey hit the brakes, and KyBu says he lifted, but he got into Kasey. KyBu says it was his bad. He was definitely getting a push from behind though at that moment.
Lap 52, Jeff Gordon’s water temperature is higher than he’d like. Lap 53 Kenseth is feeling a vibration and believes its a loose wheel or tire on the right side.
Lap 85 Caution is out for debris.
Danica leads on the restart on lap 90 and she leads the lap.
FYI I HATE the mid-race report. Talking head to talking head, all yelling, stop the madness!!! Just let Mike Joy have a segment to talk – ALONE – Shut Up Larry McReynolds – and do a quick re-cap of the race. The yelling drives me insane. I understand the pit reporters yelling during a race because they want to be heard above the roar of the engines (and many people don’t understand that while they may be having an issue hearing, their voice is amplified with a microphone, so we, the audience, don’t have a problem hearing). Too many folks confused loud with exciting. It’s like NASCAR produced by Michael Bay.
The pit reporters have told us all they have up to that point in the race, so there’s no need to go to them during the mid-race report; unless you have the pit reporters do the mid-race report. A different pit reporter would be assigned each week to do the mid-race report. We’re subjected to Larry Mc gabbing senselessly throughout every show. We don’t need, and he doesn’t need, additional talk time.
They gyro cam was neat the first five times I saw the shot. Now, many, many shots later, its boring already. Why does FOX overdo everything so that their innovations quickly morph into aggravations? I loved Digger initially, but they wore it out! When it was fun and only used on rare occasions, it was great, but then marketing got a hold of it and scheduled it into nausea-inducing-frequency and killed all the joy and fun of Digger. The ghost-cam was interesting the first time, but then the frequency increased so that it felt like almost every car was ghost-cam’d over every other car for no apparent reason and it lost its modest appeal.
By lap 118 I am rather tired of seeing cars riding around in a line. DW mentioned we’re two hours into racing and it feels like at least that many hours. The race is dragging at this point as it feels as though everybody is just logging laps.
Lap 123 Michael Waltrip comes in for a pit stop first in the leading cars.
Caution – Lap 137 – Accident – Carl Edwards, Trevor Bayne, Terry Labonte, Austin Dillon, Dave Blaney, Josh Wise, David Gilliland, David Ragan, Ricky Stenhouse, Brad Keselowski were involved. Keselowski got into the back of the car in front of him and spun out, Trevor was following Keselowski also spun out and the wreck was on. Stenhouse’s damage was minor. Carl’s car has gone to the garage.
Matt Kenseth had smoke coming from the left front of his car and headed into the pits when his car slowed significantly. When the hood was raised, lots of smoke came out. Shortly thereafter with 48 to go Kyle Busch came into the pits saying he’d blown up. Denny Hamlin is now leading. The JGR drivers were in a row on the track Keseth in the 20 followed by Hamlin in the 11 and KyBu i the 18. Two are gone, but the 11 is still hanging in there as we head to a commercial break.
Green flag pitstops are underway with 27 to go. With 25 to go Martin Truex Jr says his engine is blowing up.
Caution is out with 24 to go. Burton has hit the wall. Scott Speed in the Levine Racing 95 is currently leading the race.
Caution is out for debris with 9 to go. Jimmie hit something with his grill, as did Brad Keselowski. It looked like aluminum and seemed light, but Chad asked for the binoculars to check for damage.
Restart with 6 laps to go.
Crash on the turn three after the white flag comes out as Travis Kvapil hits the wall and Joey Logano and Paul Menard get part of it, race stays green.
It’s an all out battle to the finish as Dale Earnhardt Jr drop down passes Greg Biffle and Danica Patrick!
JIMMIE JOHNSON WINS!!! Today is his 400th start. Jimmie wins the first points-paying Gen 6 race.
Dale Earnhardt finishes second, unable to run down Jimmie at the end. Mark Martin finishes third.