After a pair of postponements due to rain, the 54th annual Daytona 500 finally took place on Monday night with Matt Kenseth taking the checkered flag. It was probably one of the most bizarre races in history.

It took well over 24 hours for the race to finally start, but it didn't take long for a big crash to take place. On Lap 2 Jimmie Johnson went into the wall in a nasty accident that also involved David Ragan, Trevor Bayne, Danica Patrick and Kurt Busch.  A few other incidents happened a few laps later invloving Ryan Newman who spun out and during the caution AJ Almendinger was involved in a mishap on pit road that caused him to hit the gargage making for a wicked start to the race.

Things quieted down as we went green flag racing without a major incident until lap 84 when Jeff Gordon blew an engine taking him out of the race. Terry Labonte would spin out causing a flag at lap 89.

Things started to get fast and furious as we got closer to the halfway point with the new implemented $200,000 bonus for leading at halfway, that cash went to Martin Truex Jr making a nice move past Greg Biffle getting a push from Denny Hamlin.

More insanity would happen in the second half of the race as David Stremme would blow an engine, during the caution Juan Montoya lost control of his car and crashed into one of the jet dryers causing it to burst into flames bringing out the red flag. The cleanup took well over two hours but we would get back to racing making the race go into early Tuesday morning.

54th Annual Daytona 500
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The Green flag would drop a little after midnight with 40 laps to go  but not without incident as Casey Mears and Marcos Ambrose would get into an accident at lap 176. Then with 13 to go another crash would occur that would involve a number of cars including Jamie McMurray, Brad Keselowski, Reagan Smith, and Kasey Kahne, Aric Amarola and Tony Stewart. Stewart would get away with minimal damage.Then with 4 laps left another big accident occured.Tony Stewart, Dave Blaney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Landon Cassill, Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman and others are caught up in the accident.This would lead to a Green White Checkered finish.

With the final few laps we started with single file racing with Kenseth in front, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would try to make a move in the final turn but couldn't quite do it and Kenseth would take the checkered flag.

 

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