By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – As has become tradition in the NASCAR Truck Series season opener at Daytona, yellow was the primary color of the evening, with a record 12 cautions and an overtime finish that ended with a melee on the backstretch and an airborne truck.
In the end, it was Nick Sanchez, the 22-year-old from Miami that was out front when it mattered the most, capturing his first career win in NASCAR’s third-tier series.
“It was definitely a pretty wild race, obviously, what happened to us earlier kind of set the tone for us,” said Sanchez. “But right there was just classical Daytona, overtime, restarts, the odds of us finishing under green weren’t really well, so I knew I was pretty much going to have to take the lead on the white flag and hope they wrecked.
“That happened, and it was kind of odd because our restart played out the same in consecutive restarts with the 7 and 71 getting connected and kind of getting too big of a lead, and literally the same thing happened, me and the 17 passed them.
“It was kind of odd. I wasn’t really expecting that to happen. Honestly, I kind of thought I lost the race during that last restart, but it worked out.”
Leading three times for 26 laps, the driver of the No. 2 Chevrolet for REV Racing, took over the lead for the final time with 10 laps to go and held onto the point when the race was pushed into overtime.
Lining up with Tanner Gray on his rear decklid and the Spire Motorsports duo of Rajah Caruth and Corey Lajoie on his outside, it was anyone’s guess on who would come out on top or how long the race might run in overtime.
Caruth and Lajoie took the early advantage, but heading down the backstretch on the first lap of overtime, Sanchez and Gray finally got their act together and bolted by the Spire duo with a head of steam to retake the lead as the field stormed by the flag stand to take the white flag.
With Sanchez firmly in the lead, it was a hornet’s nest behind him as the remainder of the field jockeyed for position in their attempt to mount a comeback against Sanchez over the course of the final lap.
Coming off Turn 2 and heading down the backstretch, it all came to a head.
A move up the track from Caruth caused contact to the right-rear of Jack Wood’s No. 91 Chevrolet, turning him sideways into the No. 17 Toyota of Taylor Gray, which sent Gray head-on into the outside wall and eventually up and over when the…
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