Rainfall again puts Stewart out front for Cup start

Friday, Jul. 03, 2009

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – In one sense, Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway marks both the halfway point and a new beginning to the 2009 Sprint Cup Series season.

The 18th race of the year divides the 36-race schedule, but it will also afford teams a “do-over,” of sorts, of the Daytona 500.

The season opener was cut short by rain after 152 of the scheduled 200 laps and Matt Kenseth emerged the winner of the race that went just 380 miles, prompting a lot of discord among fans.

Kenseth used a push from Kevin Harvick to slide past Elliott Sadler 54 laps from the finish, and just moments later a caution was displayed for a wreck by Aric Almirola. Rain then sealed Kenseth’s first 500 victory.

If all 400 miles of Saturday night’s race are run, the winner will have covered a greater distance than Kenseth in February.

Oddly enough, rain has already played a factor this weekend with Friday's qualifying session getting washed out.

Series points leader Tony Stewart will start from the pole due to a rainout for the second consecutive race. Jeff Gordon will line up second and his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jimmie Johnson, starts third.

“I think that there was a good race going on here in the spring. The action was just starting to heat up because we knew rain was coming,” said Kyle Busch, who’ll start eighth. “There was a lot of strategy involved, too.

“Reed Sorenson was out front. Elliott Sadler was out front. Kenseth, I think, was out front - all due to pit strategy. That got confusing there on what all was going to happen.”

Busch actually led the most laps (88) in the 500, but finished 41st after being involved in a wreck. Sadler led the second-most laps (24) while Kenseth led only seven.

Carl Edwards, who finished 18th in the 500, said he felt his car was better than his finish showed.

“I felt like the Daytona 500 was a good race. Our car was good,” he said. “It obviously didn’t finish under green, which is never good, but I felt like we learned enough at that race that we can lean on that information and have a little bit of confidence.

“The last two trips here, I felt like we’ve been good.”

Ryan Newman is one driver whose fortunes have drastically changed since the season’s first race - a weekend that included a blown engine, a wreck in his 125-mile qualifying race and a wreck in a practice session. He ended up using three cars.

“I would just like to redo the (Daytona) 500 and get a re-baseline here at Daytona,” Newman said. “We went through so many race cars that it kind of almost doesn’t count.

“It’s kind of like our first trip to Daytona, coming back to just kind of try to redeem ourselves for the cluster that we had going on in February.”

Kenseth hopes the second trip to race at Daytona brings the return of his early season success, which has been missing in recent months.

“That was cool that we won in the spring, but that’s already a long time ago. It’s totally way different in July,” Kenseth said.

“It only takes usually a couple of weeks, not to forget about (a win), but to move on to the next week. You’ve got to keep concentrating on the task at hand and the next challenge and the next week.

“You can’t really spend the season thinking about a win that you had. You’ve got to keep on working on what you’re doing right now.”

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