DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
With tandem drafting dominating Daytona Speedweeks, Thursday’s Gatorade Duel races proved that Sunday’s win will be decided by teamwork.Duel winners Kurt Busch and Jeff Burton relied on dancing partners to push them into Victory Lane in the 150-mile qualifying races.
For Busch, it was a double-double for the double deuce. Five days after winning the Budweiser Shootout, Busch doubled down with Regan Smith for a victory in the first Gatorade Duel. The win earned Busch the No. 3 starting spot for Sunday’s Daytona 500, though he will actually start at No. 1 as pole-winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start near the back of the field after wrecking in practice Wednesday and going to a backup car for the race. Smith will start directly behind Busch.
Busch worked extremely well with Smith throughout the entire race — much to the chagrin of the Richard Childress Racing camp, which would have preferred to have Smith’s No. 78 Chevrolet, powered by Earnhardt Childress engines, on its side.
But, as Busch pointed out following his Shootout win — and again after his Duel — it’s all about having a teammate (and not necessarily under the same roof as the driver). With this new style of racing, it’s all about picking a partner and trusting him to the finish.
“You have to have a partner. The slingshot is there. Regan Smith, awesome competitor. He’s been strong on these restrictor plate tracks and he was a great teammate today.”
In the second Gatorade Duel, it was true teammates finishing 1-2 — Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer of Richard Childress Racing. From the first corner, Burton (starting fourth) dropped down behind Bowyer (starting third) and pushed him to the lead for the first eight laps.
The RCR tandem lined up and led seven times for 27 of 60 laps. Only the pair of Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth led more laps in the Duels.
The radio communication between the Nos. 31 and 33 along with their spotters, crew chiefs and team owner Richard Childress was a masterful display of solidarity. The strategy of when to hook up, when to swap and when to watch competitors gaining speed all played a part in Burton’s victory.
“It's an advantage to have a teammate, there's no question about it,” Burton said. “Everybody can see that. The difficult part is getting with a teammate. We worked diligently today to make sure we were with a teammate. There's no question about that.
“We tried very hard to be with Clint. Everywhere he went, I went. Everywhere I went, he went. (Crew chief Todd Berrier) said it best, ‘It's a shame there wasn't room in Victory Lane for both cars.’ ”
While Burton was able to remain with Bowyer throughout the qualifier, he knows there are no guarantees come Sunday’s 500, when there will be 43 cars on the track, multiple cautions and lots of uncertainty on pit road. Hooking back up with a drafting partner after pitting is much simpler with 24 cars to contend with compared to a full Sprint Cup field.
“It doesn't always work out,” Burton said of reconnecting on the track. “You can have everything lined up and get a restart. Now you're side-by-side instead of front to back. You can try to get in front of each other, but that doesn't mean it's going to work out, like what happened to (RCR teammate Harvick) and I on Saturday night.
“It's important. Everybody is going to try really hard to be with a teammate, but there's times it's not going to work out. You're going to have to go and make it work with someone that is willing to work with you as hard as a guy that is your teammate.”
With every practice and every race at Daytona International Speedway, drivers and teams learned something to apply to the next time the cars take to the track.
In the aftermath of DIS’ repaving, speeds have easily reached 206 mph and created drafting scenarios never witnessed before on the 2.5-mile speedway. Although NASCAR announced changes to the cars on Sunday and again on Wednesday aimed at decreasing speeds, the cars didn’t slow down enough to eliminate tandem drafting entirely. Instead, the driver pushing from behind moved up the track just slightly allowing air to flow into the right side of the grille — another evolution in the tandem-drafting process.
“NASCAR tried to mandate how long we could stay behind another car,” he said. “My car was hot many times and I was trying to protect it. It’s going to be a whole different game when we have to come out here and do this for 500 miles because the mental fatigue is tough.
“You have to know where your teammate is going to be and what you have to do to win this bad boy. Hey, two for two so far, we want that big one next weekend.”
Learning lessons
Trevor Bayne’s Sprint Cup coming out party at Daytona was quite impressive — especially for a teenager.Although the race lasted only 60 laps, Bayne, who turns 20 on Saturday, pushed his boyhood hero Jeff Gordon to the lead four times for a total of 10 laps. Unfortunately, the pair did not make it to the checkered flag, crashing on the final lap.
“Gordon and I worked awesome together and it was just down there at the end,” said Bayne, who will not need to go to a backup car. “Everybody is racing like it’s the last lap of the big race, so when we got down to it we were three wide at the end with a big run and I think we just ran out of real estate there and (Gordon) came off the wall and got us. That kind of stinks.
“I hate it for all these guys because we were doing awesome, but that’s part of it, I guess. We knew when we were passing those guys three wide on the outside we were gonna be in trouble, but that’s racing. We’ll get there.”
Considering it was Bayne’s first Cup run under race conditions, he quickly picked up on hooking up with a partner and how the leader of the pack “controls the group”. Bayne didn’t seem to mind running from behind.
“The pusher is just the engine and keeping it cool,” Bayne said. “That’s his only duties, but also on restarts getting to him as quick as possible, but the leader’s duties are to make sure you protect the high side, so you don’t get unplugged — as we call it — and then unplugging the other guys, putting his left-front on the right-rear of the back guy and unplugging them so you can get around them.”
Having the four-time Cup champion and three-time Daytona 500 winner pair up with Bayne was quite the endorsement. Gordon said he “really had a blast” working Bayne and called him “a heck of a racecar driver”. Bayne found the experience kind of “crazy”.
“That’s awesome for him to have that kind of faith in me to let me work with him,” Bayne said. “That takes a lot for these guys when they’ve got 20 other guys out here that they’ve been racing with their whole life, to say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take a chance with this kid, let him push me and see what we can get to.’”
Bayne will start 32nd on Sunday, crew chief Donnie Wingo characterizing the damage to the No. 21 as "cosmetic." Gordon’s crew was working to repair the damage on the No. 24 Chevrolet so he can retain the second-place qualifying position he earned last Sunday.
Numbers game
22: lead changes in the second race — a Gatorade Dual record3: wrecks involving Denny Hamlin since Speedweeks began
12: starting position from where rookie Brian Keselowski will make his Dayton debut
20: laps led by Harvick — the most of any driver in the Duels
59: career starts in races at Daytona for Bill Elliott — the most in Sunday’s field
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