DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- An early evening oil slick snared a handful of cars in Wednesday's evening practice at Daytona International Speedway, sending some teams scrambling to make repairs or prepare backup cars for Thursday's Daytona 500 qualifying races.
A cracked oil cooler on Ty Dillon's No. 95 Circle Sport-Leavine Family Racing entry dropped oil through Turns 1 and 2 on the 2.5-mile track. The next pack of cars then encountered the fluid, with Ryan Newman and Michael Waltrip taking the brunt of the damage in their spins.
Waltrip, a two-time Daytona 500 winner, will compete in the "Great American Race" in a backup BK Racing No. 83 Toyota.
The cars of Kyle Larson and David Gilliland also took damage. Newman's Richard Childress Racing No. 31 crew went to work on making front-end alterations while checking out the rear bumper as well.
"The tail section mostly is just body work but the right-front is up against the frame bar just a little bit," Newman said. "It looks entirely fixable; that was (crew chief) Luke's (Lambert) comment before we ever got it back into the garage. So, we'll see."
Larson's Chip Ganassi Racing No. 42 team opted to unload a reserve car.
"It will be fine," Larson said. "You hate to wreck one in practice here because you kind of assume you are going to get some damage tomorrow. We will probably have to send down our (Sprint) Unlimited car now as a back-up for this one."
Dillon said that the broken oil cooler did not damage the engine. He indicated the team did not plan to change the motor and that he would retain his eighth starting position in the second 150-mile qualifier.
"I hate that we tore up so many race cars, just from a parts malfunction, but there's really no one to point the blame at," Dillon said in the garage. "It would've been impossible to find that crack that small in the oil cooler before we went out. I hate it for those guys that did get torn up, but there was really nothing we could do. It wasn't like I could pull out of the way any quicker because I had so much oil on the right-front (tire). I was just trying to keep it out of the wall."