Matt Kenseth's winning Best Buy #17
Finally, after about 6 hours Matt Kenseth crossed the finish line first and won the 2012 Daytona 500. This marathon race weekend started on Sunday, but after lengthy rain delays, it rolled at 7 pm Monday night and rolled and rolled and rolled.
Typical of what is called "pack racing", there were multiple accidents. Pack racing is where all the cars are running in a large pack, almost touching front, back and sides, at (now get this) just under 200 mph, yes that's miles per hour! One small mistake usually causes a multi car wreck and last night was no exception, however a 2 hour red flag (racing is stopped) due to a bizarre situation was the reason for its marathon length.
Very powerful jet dryers are used to clean the track during caution periods. These are basically jet helicopter engines mounted on a trailer pulled by a truck. During a late caution, Juan Pablo Montoya was running quickly trying to catch the pack of cars, when something went wrong with his car causing it to slide sideways right into the jet dryer (see You Tube "Jet dryer on fire" for some great video). Not only did he total his race car, but did considerable damage to the dryer, the pull truck and its driver. Not surprising considering he was going close to 130 mph. The resulting fire from 200 gallons of jet fuel and clean up took close to 2 hours, hence one very long race.
The Mystery Cruze I mentioned in my last blog looks like it was a screw up. The ski prize pack from the Sick Kids Lottery, that included the Cruze 5 door has been deleted from the lottery website. I also checked at the auto show as to when this car was coming here and was told probably not this year. Interesting that this was not caught before being publicized. Mystery Cruze indeed!
Until next time.......
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