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The season opening NASCAR exhibition race the Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway is in the books. Even with testing and two days of practice not one driver or fan knew how the racing would be. Somehow Kevin Harvick was able to figure it out enough to win.
Kevin Harvick explained, “As we walked out to driver intros, there was not one driver out there that said, Man, I feel like I can do this, do that, I feel like my car is fast. Everybody was scared to death because they didn’t have enough cars at the test, then we came back to the Shootout. We have provisions to have another car. You’re just so short on cars, you didn’t want to take any chances.”
The race started out like just about every restrictor plate race at Daytona International Speedway, racing with multiple lines of cars in one big pack. With the exception of a couple of passes at the green flag before the cars were up to speed there was no sign of two car tandem racing.
Every driver was trying to test the waters with the new generation six car. Some were better than others. Right at the beginning it appeared that Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle were the cars to beat. Matt Kenseth appeared to be the fastest car but since no one seemed to be able to keep up with him we really don’t know how good his drafting would have been.
The race was relatively tame except Tony Stewart made a move similar to the one he made at Talladega last year where he wrecked the field. The result was the same and seven of 19 cars didn’t make it to the last two segments.
Kevin Harvick said about pack racing, “It’s going to be a pack, absolutely. I think it’s going to be a pack. I don’t think there’s going to be too many chances. You’ll see some cars breakaway. I think if you turn on a 2000 race, one of those races, it’s going to be very similar before we went to the wicker bill.”
It looked like old school drafting and Kevin indicated it was but he also said they were still figuring it out and more cars on the track might make it different still. “You’re going to have a lot more advancing of positions when you get so many cars out there.” Kevin said, “Tonight you’d have eight cars up top, four on the bottom. Eight cars is always going to win over four. It’s a difficult situation with fewer racecars. But they were always in a pack. Even though tonight they were somewhat in a pack.”
Looks like we have the restrictor race pack racing “Old School” style we love and cars that look like one we can buy at the dealer. Race fans NASCAR is back and the Daytona 500 is going to be great.
Brian Berg Jr. is a NASCAR writer for www.RantSports.com.
Follow him on Twitter @brian_jr1 during the race and throughout the week for more NASCAR news and commentary. On Facebook at NASCAR News and Commentary. On Pinterest at NASCARnews. Also add to your network on Google.
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