Almirola steers clear of wrecks

Monday, July 7, 2014

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- After winning his first Sprint Cup race Sunday, Aric Almirola thanked the fans, his pit crew, God, his sponsors, Richard Petty and Mother Nature, who was kind enough to deluge Daytona at just the right moment.

He also should have thanked his fellow drivers for going crash-crazy.

There were almost as many cars in the garage as on the track when the Coke Zero 400 ended. That's not the only reason Almirola won, but it never hurts when you don't have to look at Jimmie Johnson in the rearview mirror.

Or Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon or most of the leaders in the Sprint Cup series. They were either out of the race or hopelessly behind thanks to the carnage.

The key to winning a restrictor-plate race is to avoid The Big One. There were two Big Ones on Sunday involving 42 cars, some of them twice. Drivers were racing as if the Coke Zero could end at any minute, which it did.

"I think you saw a couple of big wrecks today because we didn't know if we'd get past Lap 80," Kurt Busch said.

Lap 80 was the halfway point, when the race would become official. With dark clouds hovering most of the day, the possibility of a rain-shortened race factored into everybody's calculations.

"You just never know when the checkered [flag] is going to come," runner-up Brian Vickers said.

The sporadic rain, sunshine and non-stop humidity also made the track slicker than normal. Put those factors together, toss in the usual pack racing at Daytona, and a demolition derby was probably inevitable.

Vickers sensed that about 15 laps into the race. He was near the lead but dropped back.

"I had a bad feeling about the energy in the pack," Vickers said.

A lap later, Ricky Stenhouse clipped the back of Stewart's car, setting off a 16-car chain reaction.

"Every week it's something kind of with him," Stewart said of Stenhouse. "I love him like a little brother, but it makes me nervous to be around him on the racetrack."

Replays showed Gordon might have pushed Stenhouse into Stewart, though assigning blame is always difficult in the fog of restrictor-plate war. It was the same on Lap 98 when Greg Biffle's car got loose on the backstretch. When the mud stopped flying, Kyle Busch was upside-down and 25 other cars had been damaged.

"It just felt like a slow carnival ride," Busch said. "I guess that's fitting for the 4th of July, but not here at Daytona."

With the Who's-Who of NASCAR out, the race became a Who's-That? Almirola was winless in 124 Sprint Cup starts. He was in the lead when the clouds opened up on Lap 112. After an hour of looking at the ominous sky, NASCAR officials awarded Almirola the win.

"You can't do it all on luck," he said.

A little luck can help, however, especially when you're not accustomed to getting it. Vickers had three victories in 298 tries.

The biggest name in the lead pack was Danica Patrick, who hadn't won in 63 Sprint Cup tries. She got as high as fourth place but overshot her stall during a pit stop. She finished eighth, her second top-10 finish of the season.

If you took out third-place finisher Kurt Busch and sixth-place finisher Denny Hamlin, the top 10 finishers had 14 wins in 1,575 races.

"We just made it through the wrecks," said rookie Austin Dillon, who finished fifth.

This year more than ever, that was the strategy to take.

Sports on 07/07/2014