NASCAR preview: Coke Zero 400
Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway – the race most consider the halfway point of the Sprint Cup season – will see a first at the track: double-file restarts.
The series switched to double-file restarts last month at Pocono, and Saturday night’s race will be the first Cup race on a restrictor-plate track since the change. The leader has the choice of restarting on the inside or outside, and at Daytona the best scenario for the leader is to have a teammate behind him.
“I think the leader is really going to dictate how he can use the restart to his advantage,” Kurt Busch said.
“Let’s say that I’m the leader, and I have [teammate] David Stremme in third. I’m going to change to the inside lane, because I know the third-place guys will have the inside lane. If I’ve got [teammate] Sam Hornish Jr. running fourth, then I have that option to start the race on the outside of the front row.”
Matt Kenseth won the season-opening Daytona 500, but you probably don’t want to bet on him at WagerWeb.com to win this week. The last driver to sweep both races at Daytona was Bobby Allison in 1982. Plus Kenseth has been rather quiet since winning the week after Dayton in California.
Kyle Busch is the defending champ of this race. He had a streak of three top-five finishes in a row at Daytona smashed by an accident in the season opener in February. But he led 88 laps in the Daytona 500 and had the best car until he got caught up in a wreck.
Tony Stewart is the WagerWeb.com favorite this week, and he has won this race twice. The current points leader has finished in the top five in four of the past five races on the Cup series. He finished eighth at this year’s Daytona 500. In 21 career races at the track, Stewart has those two wins, six top fives, and 11 top 10s.
Jeff Gordon tops the all-time win list among active drivers at Daytona with six Cup victories.
Meanwhile, Chevrolet won eight straight Daytona races from 2004-07, but is winless in the last four.
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