Twenty years later, the No. 3 is back in Victory Lane at Daytona!
Austin Dillon dropped kicked Aric Almirola took the lead on the last lap of Sunday’s Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway, driving Almirola into the fence and out of the way to snag the win 20 years after Dale Earnhardt won his first Great American Race. Dillon stood in Victory Lane with Earnhardt that day, as a 7-year-old.
The victory is Dillon’s second career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win, and first at the Daytona International Speedway.
The Fraternal Order of The Go Fast
None of the players, this week, had Austin Dillon on their radar scope. Therefore, this weekly award goes back on the shelf til the next race in Atlanta.
The Movers and Shakers
The highest scoring player this week is Bobby Blue Crush. Ol Blue Crush was the only player who was riding shotgun with the most dominating driver of the day, third generation driver Ryan Blaney. Blaney and his new Team Penske No 12 Ford Fusion led 118 laps of the 207 laps raced today. Blue Crush’s reward was a nifty 48 points to start off the season!
One of our “newbies”, Don The Engine Builder, got his season off to a fabulously flying start, racking up 41 points from a 4th place finish from”Sliced Bread”, aka Joey Logano.
The sisterhood of Edie The Las Vegas Super Star and Linda B. The Cookie Mom had all their marbles neatly tucked into the marble sack of the 2017 MENCS champ, Martin Truex, Jr. today. Truex faired well in the stages and finished 18th when the checkered flag flew at Daytona. Both ladies kick their season off really cool to the tune of 30 points.
Meanwhile, Kathy The Church Forecloser and David The Mudslinging Throttle Jockey slipped underneath the radar with their choice of Dale Jr’s replacement driver, Alex Bowman. Bowman ran consistently strong for most of the race til he was collected up in one of the “Big Ones”, nevertheless he delivered 29 points for these two players.
Rounding out the top five scorers for Daytona is Doug The Gandy Candy Man. The Candy Man received 21 points from Kurt Busch’s 26th place.
Straight From The Crapper
This week we have two players who were only able to rack up a single point as the season opened up. A&M Aggie Sue and Ol Skid-Marc each were able only to log one point for their Daytona tally. Aggie Sue racked up her one point from Mr. Seven-Time, Jimmie Johnson, and Skid-Marc received the same score form Erik Jones. Each will share “The Crappiest Pick of The Week” award. Since this is the first race of the segment, this duo not only won “The Crappiest Pick of The Week” award but also both Aggie Sue and Skid-Marc will be occupying the “side-by-side” version of “The Outhouse Award” this week!
With the advent of stage racing last year the normally hectic plate racing volume is now turned up to 12! For most of the race many of the drivers probably were thinking to themselves that there are “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you”!
Next week the traveling NASCAR circus heads down to the lightning fast mile and a half track, the Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, GA,
TIL NEXT TIME, PULL YOUR GLOVES UP, FLIP YOUR VISOR DOWN, AND LET’S GO RACIN’!