Ill-handling race cars draw concern following Shootout

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- There were a lot of complaints about ill-handling race cars both during and after Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout at Daytona International Speedway, but the final post-mortem seemed to be "business as usual."

The Shootout continued the trend begun in the ARCA Series race that preceded it, where 21 of the 43 cars wrecked. And that provided Kyle Busch the perfect entrée to question the new car's handling in the Shootout, even after he led six laps and finished 10th..

Early wake-up call

Joey Logano and Scott Speed got a quick introduction to Daytona as both crashed early in the Budweiser Shootout.

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"It was probably one of the best driving cars and it still drove terrible," Busch said as he walked from a brief, grin-filled post-race meeting with Dale Earnhardt Jr. "They're not built for this race track, really. The biggest thing is they are just bouncing all over the place and nobody can hold their own lane.

"A guy on the bottom either slides up because he's tight or because he's loose and it's just so difficult to race out there, especially racing like three-wide or something like that and bump-drafting each other. The cars are tipping back and forth and all over the place. They're very hard to handle. I mean, we look like ARCA drivers."

The Shootout, a 75-lap special event in which only the top-two spots get a significant payoff, creates a more intense pace than what's expected next week in the Daytona 500. That might have resulted in some issues, but the fact is, the race had a record number of leaders (14) lead changes (23) and also cautions (eight).

"The racing was pretty wild," second-place man Jamie McMurray said. "Three-wide was OK on new tires, but it seemed like when you got old tires, they'd have to slow down getting in the corner and someone behind them would be good and when you'd get on that guy's outside, he was hanging on.

"My car did not feel out of control. They bounce around a lot and that's good. I told someone that the other day and they said, 'They should repave the race track,' and I'm like, 'Oh my God, no.' That's what makes Daytona so great is the huge bump in Turn 1 and that's what makes the really good-handling cars shine, when you hit those bumps and your car doesn't get out of control.

"The 96 [Bobby Labonte] wrecked about five times and just didn't complete it, so I think it was harder in the beginning. You had some guys in the front that their cars didn't drive very well and when the faster guys whose cars drove well made them three-wide, it was a little bit scary." (Continued)