NASCAR Daytona 500 Suffers Delays and Fiery Crashes

The American NASCAR series is often criticized, often justly, for being technologically backward. What you can not criticize it for is the close racing and constant passing. The Daytona 500 is one of the gems on the NASCAR calendar. It opens the series' season and is one of the most popular races. While this year the race suffered some major problems, it gave spectators a close finish. 

The action started before the race even began, when it was postponed do to rain multiple times. The race was supposed to start on Sunday afternoon in the US, but because of storm clouds, the green flag was first moved to Sunday evening, then Monday afternoon and finally Monday evening. The race had barely completed a lap when favorite driver Jimmie Johnson was bumped into the wall knocking him and another driver out of the race barely before it had began. 

In fact many major crashed out of the race including: Robby Gordon, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch and Danica Patrick. Ex-Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya left the race in spectacular fashion. During a caution, his car suffered a transmission failure and crashed into the back of the jet dryer creating a huge fireball. With 40 laps to go, this stopped the race for nearly two hours. You can view the incident below. 

There was another, smaller crash with a fewlaps left of the race leading to a sprint to the finish. Drivers Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr and Greg Biffle took first, second and third, repectively with less than 0.3 seconds seperating the three of them. 

Source: Autosport