The 49th running of the Daytona 500 was one for the ages, as it concluded with a wild ending and one of the closest finishes in NASCAR Cup Series history.
It’s an ending that’s still talked about today — not just because of the photo finish that marked its conclusion, but also due to what could have been for one of the sport’s elder statesmen at the time.
The stories were numerous entering the race. There were a whopping 61 cars that entered the 2007 Daytona 500 and 18 drivers who went home, including Bill Elliott and Paul Menard.
It also marked the first foray into the Great American Race for open wheel ace Juan Pablo Montoya, a rookie for Chip Ganassi Racing. He was one of four rookies in the field, the others all named David — David Ragan, David Gilliland and David Reutimann.
Speaking of Gilliland, he started off his maiden full Cup season with a bang, winning the pole for the race with a speed of 186.320 mph. His Robert Yates Racing teammate Ricky Rudd started on the outside of the front row, giving the team a clean sweep of row one.
The 2007 Daytona 500 also marked a coming out party of sorts for Michael Waltrip Racing, which had existed in varying forms before 2007 but became a bona fide three-car Cup team for the start of the year, running Toyotas. Michael Waltrip, Reutimann and Dale Jarrett were its drivers, and all three were able to qualify for the big show on Sunday.
It wasn’t without controversy, though. Waltrip and his team were each docked 100 driver and owner points, and his crew chief, David Hyder, was fined $100,000. NASCAR inspectors found an illegal substance in the fuel system of Waltrip’s No. 55 Toyota before and after qualifying. The penalty left Waltrip in the negative in the points standings after Daytona.
After a part-time foray into the series in 2006, Red Bull Racing arrived at Daytona for its first full-time run in 2007 with a pair of cars, driven by Brian Vickers and AJ Allmendinger. It fared worse than MWR; both entries failed to qualify.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Tony Stewart and Hendrick Motorsports’ Jeff Gordon won qualifying Duels one and two and were slated to take the third and fourth starting positions. However, Gordon failed inspection after the second duel and was relegated to the rear of the field.
The rest of the top 10 starters consisted of Kurt Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., David Stremme, Jeff Burton, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth.
The race kicked…
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