Twin Wins for Gordon, Waltrip

After the two Gatorade Twin 125 qualifying races Thursday at Daytona International Raceway, the biggest question is not if the Fords need more aerodynamic help to be competitive, or if Jeff Gordon is headed for a fifth Winston Cup title, or if Michael Waltrip can win his second consecutive Daytona 500.

The bigger question is: Will Sunday’s 500 be like the first Twin, won easily by Gordon, or like the second Twin, won by Waltrip in a struggle?

If it’s like the first, fans might be better off watching curling from the Olympics.

If it’s like the second, it could be 500 miles of old-fashioned, hard-nosed racing that could keep the anticipated 225,000 fans on their feet for most of three hours.

Chevrolets continued to dominate. Both winners were in Chevys, as are Sunday’s front-row pair of rookie Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick.

Johnson, in his fourth Winston Cup race, got a lesson from NASCAR’s rule-makers when he was given a stop-and-go penalty for driving below the yellow line on the seventh lap of the first race.

At the time, the El Cajon off-road veteran was running fifth. With no yellow caution flags during the 50-lap sprint, he never recovered and finished last.

“I was not trying to test NASCAR by any means,” Johnson said. “I was trying to protect our race car. Mike Wallace was blocking me and running me below the yellow line on the backstretch and to avoid a wreck I crossed the line and jumped on the brakes to try to keep from passing him, but I had Ward Burton pushing me through and I guess I completed the pass and they didn’t like it.”

Gordon took the lead from Johnson on the first time around the 2 1/2-mile triangular oval and was never seriously challenged.

A five-car breakaway of Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Ken Schrader, Ricky Rudd and Wallace ran together for the final 35 laps and the only change came when Wallace dropped back and Terry Labonte took over fifth place.

“When you have as strong a car as I had and you get out front that early, the leader has a huge advantage,” Gordon said.

Gordon averaged 183.674 mph, close to Johnson’s pole qualifying 185.831.

A seven-car accident and two caution flags gave the second race more the look of a Daytona 500.

Waltrip, who won last year’s 500 by holding off a charging Earnhardt Jr., had Tony Stewart and a pack of 15 to 20 cars on his bumper most of the 46 laps he led.

“Wow, that was wild out there,” Waltrip said. “I was a busy man those last 20 laps. Maybe the caution flags helped keep the pack together in our race, I don’t know.

“When I came off the last turn and saw Tony coming at me, I tried to block him, first right and then left so he couldn’t pass me and it worked. It was wild from where I was sitting.”

Stewart, who lost Sunday’s Budweiser Shootout by holding off Earnhardt Jr., agreed.

“We’ve got a good car for Sunday, but I’ll tell you what, though, Michael Waltrip just did a great job today,” Stewart said. “His car got real wide. There are going to be a lot of good cars Sunday. I think you get both of these two groups together and you’re not going to have what we had in the first race.”

The accident was triggered when the ignition cut off on Mike Skinner’s car. He slowed and was hit in the rear and turned sideways by Buckshot Jones. Before cars stopped spinning and crashing, Shawna Robinson, Bobby Gerhart, Dave Blaney, Jimmy Spencer and Jones were knocked out of the race.

Robinson, hoping to be the first woman in the Daytona 500 since Janet Guthrie in 1977, made the 43-car field with her qualifying speed of 182.663--the slowest car to qualify.

Blaney also got in the race through an owner’s provisional, but Spencer, who left Travis Carter’s team to switch to Chip Ganassi’s Target car this season, will miss his first 500 in 11 seasons because Ganassi has no provisionals.

“Some guys made some questionable moves, and they made the race, and we didn’t,” Spencer said. “There’s nothing you can do when you get hit from behind.”

One driver who escaped the accident and made the 500 field by finishing seventh was Dave Marcis, who will be 61 on March 1. He will be starting his 33rd Daytona 500 and has announced it will be the final race of his career.

“The race car does not know how old the driver is,” said the popular Marcis, who still wears wing-tip shoes when driving. “I seen the car [in the wreck] coming sideways so I stayed on the gas, found a hole and got through it.”

The Ford drivers weren’t nearly as happy, even with the quarter-inch reduction in the height of their rear spoiler given them last Sunday, a change that NASCAR President Mike Helton said should save two-tenths of a second a lap.

“Did I think the quarter-inch helped? No,” snapped Dale Jarrett after finishing 10th in the first race. “I wouldn’t have ever known that anything had changed if I hadn’t seen them cut it off myself.”

The highest finishing Ford was Rudd, fourth in the first race. His will be the only Ford in the first seven rows.

In Busch series qualifying postponed from Wednesday, Joe Nemechek won the pole for Saturday’s Live Well 300 with a 186.254 mph lap in his Pontiac.

Former Winston Cup drivers Ted Musgrave and Ron Hornaday Jr. will start on the front row today in the Florida Dodge Dealers 250, the opening race of the Craftsman Truck series.

Also today will be the first round of the 26th International Race of Champions, a 40-lap dash for 12 drivers from different types of racing. On the front row will be former Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack of Sweden and World of Outlaws sprint car champion Danny Lasoski, who earned their spots in a blind draw.