The end of stage one in the 2018 Daytona 500 also meant the end of the day for several top contenders. A multi-car wreck on the backstretch ended the afternoon for Jimmie Johnson, Daniel Suarez, Erik Jones and Ty Dillon while severely damaging several others.
It all started when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. got loose making a block on the backstretch. While Stenhouse kept his car straight, the resulting slowdown caused Jones to hit him and then lose control. As the stage wound down, Jones was sideways in front of the field, and many of the lead pack drivers simply had nowhere to go.
“Unfortunately, many thought that was the black and white checkered flag, not the green-and-white checkered flag,” said Johnson, who lost his third car in three Speedweeks races. “Lap 59, to be throwing blocks like that, there’s going to be a lot of wrecked race cars.”
The eight-car incident in all put a cloud over the end to an aggressive first stage. The side-by-side action was wild and crazy in the closing laps as drivers were fighting hard for that first playoff point.
But did the blocking by Stenhouse and others go a little too far?
“I guess a couple of guys were overaggressive a little too early,” said Suarez after being knocked out. “I thought in this kind of racing, you need to be two places, in the front or in the back. We were able to race in the front, and I thought it was going to be safer up there.”
Only 29 cars remained on the lead lap at the end of stage one.
The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 40+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.
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