A RICK-STAR MOMENT
Stenhouse ends 5-year drought with landmark win for his car owners
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has had a roller-coaster career in which he had to fight to keep a job, lost his seat at a NASCAR powerhouse team and opened his 14th season mired in a five-year losing streak.
To say this Daytona 500 was a milestone race was an understatement — for Stenhouse and for NASCAR.
Stenhouse won the Daytona 500 in double overtime and under caution Sunday in the longest running of “The Great American Race.” The two overtimes pushed the 65th running of the race to a record 212 laps — a dozen laps beyond the scheduled distance and a whopping 530 miles.
Stenhouse’s win for JTG Daugherty Racing was the third of his career. JTG is the first single-car team to win the Daytona 500 since The Wood Brothers Racing did it with Trevor Bayne in 2011.
The team is owned by Tad and Jodi Geschickter along with former NBA player Brad Daugherty. Daugherty is the first Black car owner to win the race, and Jodi Geschickter joined Teresa Earnhardt as female car owners to win the Daytona 500. Earnhardt ran Dale Earnhardt Inc. when Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500 in 2003 and 2004.
To get to victory lane Sunday, JTG stuck with Stenhouse and even reunited him this season with the crew chief who led him to a pair of Xfinity Series titles years ago.
Mike Kelly’s biggest task was convincing Stenhouse that he can indeed win races. So ahead of the Daytona 500, he taped a note inside the Chevrolet. The message? The team believes in the driver.
“When I woke up today, I told myself that I was going to do something that I used to do for Ricky when we had tough days,” Kelly said. “I just wrote him a note that only he would see. It was on top of the roll bar in front of him, and it just said, ‘We believe.’ That’s been our motto the whole offseason — that we believe. We’re trying to get people to believe in Ricky Stenhouse Jr. again.”
Stenhouse’s only other victories came in 2017, at Talladega and the summer race at Daytona. Now the 35-year-old from Olive Branch, Mississippi, has a repeat win at Daytona in NASCAR’s biggest race of the season.
“I think this whole offseason Mike just preached how much we all believed in each other. They left me a note in the car that said they believe in me and to go get the job done,” Stenhouse said. “Man, this is unbelievable. This was the site of my last win back in 2017. We’ve worked really hard. We had a couple shots last year to get a win and fell short.
“It was a tough season, but man, we got it
done, Daytona 500.”
Kyle Larson was collected in the raceending crash after he jumped out of line too early in an attempt to win the race.
“Happy that Ricky won. I’m super happy. That’s all I could think about after I crashed, waiting to hear that he won,” Larson said. “He’s one of my best friends, so I was like yelling into my helmet when I helped push him to the lead there. I was hoping it was going to stay green so it would have been me or him win.’’
Reigning Cup champion Joey Logano finished
second in a Ford for Team Penske, which won the race last year with Austin Cindric.
“Second is the worst, man,” Logano said. “Congratulations to Ricky. There’s nothing like winning the Daytona 500. That’s why it stings so much finishing second.”
Christopher Bell was third in a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing and followed by Chris Buescher in a Ford for RFK Racing and pole-sitter Alex Bowman of Hendrick Motorsports in a Chevrolet. It marked the first time the pole-sitter has finished in the top five since Bill Elliott in 2001.