Lap 41 damage derails three-time champion’s bid for first Daytona 500 win
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — 0-for-17.
Tony Stewart’s career-long quest to win the Daytona 500 will have to wait another year. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver, with a fast car throughout Speedweeks, was involved in a Lap 41 wreck that eventually put his No. 14 Chevrolet behind the wall for good Sunday at Daytona International Speedway.
The three-time premier series champion took the blame for the wreck after he drifted up the track and made contact with Ryan Blaney, the result of which sent him hard into the outside wall and brought out the second caution flag of the day.
Matt Kenseth, who was also fast this week and won the Sprint Unlimited on Feb. 14, was among the other cars involved to take heavy damage.
“My fault, I let it get away from me,” Stewart said after exiting his SHR entry and heading back to his hauler. “We were fine as long as we were two-wide, then when it got three-wide that particular lap it got away from me. I got out of the gas and couldn’t get the front end caught up when I got out of the gas.
“I just got tight. I was a little bit tight before that. We took two tires on the stop before that. I needed to get to that next pit stop to get it fixed.”
Stewart — who does have four wins at Daytona, all coming in the summer race — returned to the track on Lap 110, 64 laps down. On Lap 141, he brought his car back to the garage and called it a day.
”It was fast enough to stay with the pack there,” Stewart said. “I actually just stayed with Mike Wallace to try to help my buddy out there, but we ran as many laps as we could to get us to where we couldn’t run any more laps and gain anything.”
Apart from points, another reason Stewart decided to pull himself out was because of the nature of the race itself.
Superspeedway racing inherently lends itself to big wrecks. Kyle Busch was injured during Saturday’s XFINITY Series season-opening Alert Today Florida 300 after a wreck, and Stewart thought there was no reason to take the chance for himself or his competitors.
“The biggest race of the year; the last thing we want to do is stay out there and have something else happen and get in the middle of something else,” he said. “That’s just letting those guys have their day now.”
The 42nd-place finish was the third straight finish of 35th or worse for the veteran in the Daytona 500.
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