It was after dark before they finally restarted the race. As it often does, finicky Florida weather blew in from the West and stopped the race after covering only about 90 of the schedules 500 miles. The made it all the way to lap 38 before the thunderstorm struck and brought the Daytona 500 to a screeching halt.
Then came the tornado warnings which called for a mandatory clearing of the grandstands. What a mess. All those people and no one wanted to leave. Everyone figured that the shower would pass as they often do and they could get on with the race.
But there was a good bit of action before the rain delay occurred. Young Austin Dillon, who happens to be Richard Childress’s grandson, had won the pole position driving a Chevy with the number three on it, which was a little ire to some race fans who might have been at Daytona in 2001 when Dale Earnhardt Senior ran his #3 car into a wall and lost his life, on the last lap right there at Daytona.
But Dillon won the pole and everyone was all set for an exciting afternoon of racing. The ‘good ole boys’ (and one girl) were about to take to the track! Dillon did lead for the first lap before being passed by Denny Hamlin who settled into first place before picking up a piece of paper on his radiator which caused his 600 horsepower race car to overheat, such a small thing.
But Hamlin did a cool thing. He gave up the lead and dropped back behind another car hoping draft him a bit and try to blow off that damned piece of paper, and it actually worked! But he lost the lead.
On lap 22 rookie driver Kyle Larson managed to find the wall after spinning out in turn two which brought out the first yellow caution flag of the afternoon. Then the fun began. Everyone decided to head for the pits at the same time and things got a little jammed up with all the jockeying for position and each driver trying to find their own space.
Matt Kenseth managed to run right past his crew and ended up entering the pits backwards. His crew was forced to service the car facing in the wrong direction.
Kyle Bush had worked his way into the lead by the time the rain started with Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin and Brian Vickers right behind him followed by Menard, Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Logano, Stenhouse, Dale Jr. and the pole-sitter Austin Dillon.
