DAYTONA BEACH, Florida – Kyle Busch got his first win of the new season, beating NASCAR champion Chase Elliott after Elliott spun leader Ryan Blaney to the final straight of the Busch Clash show.
Blaney had chased Elliott into the Daytona International Speedway road course to take the lead and they had two laps left in the 35-lap Speedweeks opening on Tuesday night. Elliott, winner of the last four NASCAR racing races dating back to 2019, didn’t let Blaney get away and prepared for one last chance to win.
He dragged Blaney toward the baffle headed for the last thrust of turn 4 and, while Elliott locked himself in the bumper, the two made contact and Blaney turned on the wall. Elliott cost him the momentum and Busch came out for the surprise victory.
“I just knew how to keep my head down and focus on the front and just see if I could hit my marks to have a shot like that if something like that materialized,” Busch said.
Busch led just the last approximately 300 meters of the race for Joe Gibbs Racing’s victory. It comes after a disappointing season with a win for the 2019 NASCAR champion. The lack of success led to an off-season shake-up with his No. 18 Toyota team.
For Busch, victory comes after a disappointing season with a win for the 2019 NASCAR champion. He fought in the second half of the season, failing to make it to the final round of the championship for the first time since 2014 and its Toyota No. 18 crew was overhauled during the winter.
Gibbs made so many changes to Busch’s crew, that he joked feeling he had been fired and moved on to a new voyage.
“I’m not sure we’re mature enough or ready enough to win as a group, but I think it’s a good start,” Busch said. “Winning never hurts anything, but there are some things to improve on a little bit and to grow.”
Elliott finished second and Blaney was third. The two are close friends off the track and chatted in Blaney’s damaged race car after the finish line.
“If I’m sorry to try to win a race, I feel bad,” Elliott said. “Obviously, I don’t want to destroy anyone. I feel like you’re going to have to go look for him at an event like this.”
Blaney made it to the tough races in the first event since the November season finale.
“Of course, I didn’t want to destroy myself, but I ended up destroyed,” Blaney said. “I told him, ‘If you’re going to make a play like that, you better make sure you win the race and not let the third-place winner win.’
The Clash has always been the inaugural Speedweeks event, which traditionally spans two weekends before the opening of the Daytona 500 season. NASCAR this year is experimenting with a condensed schedule and all races span six days and conclude with the great sunday show.
This year’s race was the first time on the Daytona Road Tour, a plan announced before the 2020 season began. NASCAR went from the traditional oval to responding to calls from fans to get more variety on the calendar, and it went thinking it would be the final race of the current car before the Next Gen model was introduced.
But Next Gen has been delayed until 2022 due to the pandemic, and NASCAR used the Daytona road trip in August last year for a race with points where it had to change the schedule. to complete the season. Elliott won the inaugural Daytona test.
The crash was much smoother than last year’s race at the Daytona Oval, a crash party in which each car had at least one incident and in the end only six cars were circulating. The race also had 12 shifts of advantage, one less than the August race here which had 30 additional laps.
NASCAR will run the road race again on Feb. 21 at a points-paying event. The race moved to Daytona due to pandemic restrictions in California, where NASCAR was scheduled to run in Fontana.