Long Island native celebrates Daytona 500 win

For Hamlin, who became the fifth driver (and the first since Jarrett accomplished the feat for the second time in 2000) to sweep the Sprint Unlimited and the Daytona 500 in the same season, the final lap was a blur.

Hamlin beat Truex by 0.010 seconds in the closest finish in the history of the race.

WHAT’S NEXT: Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 on Sunday, Feb. 28, at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Sure, there wasn’t a lot of lead changes during the race, only 15 to be exact, and the outside line was at a major disadvantage throughout the afternoon, but should factors such as these really impact a races overall quality?

“This was a total team effort from Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota, Martin Truex and those guys – all of our cars up front at the end”, Hamlin said. Just ten laps later the damage ensues between Danick Patrick and Greg Biffle as they make contact; Biffle’s auto was positioned behind Patrick and tapped it just enough to send her vehicle to the infield, where it “bounced” to the point that the front end was damaged.

Matt Kenseth was one lap away from his third Daytona 500 victory. Hamlin wedged between Kenseth and Truex, and Kenseth got out of shape and had to get off the gas. And it might have carried even more significance for Toyota, which won a Daytona 500 for the first time. “It’s insane, it happened so fast”. Sunday to put Toyota in Victory Lane for the first time at the Great American Race.

“This is fantastic for Toyota”, Hamlin said.

That’s tough luck on Truex, who had never won the iconic race either.

The opening race of the season took place on Sunday night in California.

“The thrill in football, you can’t get any more excited than that, winning a Super Bowl”.

Gibbs says that Busch has learned that when something bad occurs, don’t let it lead to something worse; keep your poise and work through it. “Never give up on your dreams”. “I take pride in lifting the trophy on this one”. I expect the 4 vehicle (Kevin Harvick, who was second overall) and the 41 (Kurt Busch, eighth overall) will be strong, as well. Kenseth tried to block his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, bumped fenders with Hamlin’s vehicle, and was forced to back off to avoid wrecking.

Hamlin said he had no intentions of winning the race during the last lap, in which he jumped from fouth to first thanks to a big push. “It just came from where it did”.

– Hamlin’s win was a watershed moment for Toyota, which got off to a miserable debut a decade ago when Michael Waltrip Racing was caught wildly cheating before Toyota’s inaugural Daytona race. “I think the only thing I should have done different was (to have) been a little more aggressive coming to the line holding Denny up the racetrack”. “He just shot out that last couple of inches on me on the right before the line”.

“It’s hard to make those decisions”, Truex said. I wish I would have crowded him up the track a little bit more.

A colleague on the sports desk figured out that in a 500-mile automobile race there are 31,680,000 inches – 500 miles multiplied by 5,280 feet in a mile multiplied by 12 inches in a foot. “We were not ready”, Wilson admitted. The company didn’t win a race until Gibbs began racing Toyotas in 2008, but even then JGR used its own engines for four years.

“They don’t get much more crushing than that”, Kenseth said. With the way the rules are, it gave me the opportunity to win a championship.

Six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson was slapped with a penalty when his pit crew leaped over the wall too soon on a late pit stop. “I didn’t know we had won, but I knew it was close”. We removed the information, rectified the errors and are providing the correct information to race teams.