Pesky pothole takes center stage, causes delays at NASCAR’s season-opening Daytona 500

Pit stop: Daytona 500 deals with pesky pothole

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Greg Biffle hit it on three consecutive laps. Dale Earnhardt Jr. scraped his car across it several times.

Matt Kenseth, Clint Bowyer and others blamed it for damage.

Those guys zipping around Daytona International Speedway at nearly 190 mph Sunday found themselves in a position much like any everyday driver — trying to dodge a pothole and then waiting for it to get fixed. The small hole between turns 1 and 2 took center stage at NASCAR’s marquee event, marring an otherwise spectacular Daytona 500 and prompting officials to apologize for more than two hours of delays that had some fans heading home.

The stoppages came at a critical time for NASCAR, which began this season by making several on-track changes designed to boost sagging TV ratings.

“This is not supposed to happen,” track president Robin Braig said. “But we can come back from this. We know how to fix it. … We know how to do it right. I apologize for it. This is hallowed ground. We understand that. We accept the responsibility.”

Whether the hole damaged the sport’s credibility will play out over the next few weeks and months. Drivers, crew chiefs and owners said the frantic finish — with Jamie McMurray holding off Earnhardt on the final lap — certainly helped overcome the two delays that totaled 2 hours, 24 minutes.

“I don’t think it will have an effect on it at all,” Earnhardt said. “Track surfaces are going to have problems from time to time. This wasn’t a fault of NASCAR. It wasn’t a fault of Daytona’s or nobody’s. It was probably more or less everybody’s cars beating on the racetrack with trailing arm mounts and tailpipes. That’s going to knock a hole in some asphalt, I don’t care where you’re at.

“They’ll patch it or whatever they’ll do, and it won’t have this problem again, I promise you that.”

NASCAR and track officials said all the right things afterward, calling it an isolated problem and vowing to reach out to fans who might have felt cheated by a race that took more than six hours to complete.

“From the racing perspective, you couldn’t wish to get your season off to a better start,” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said. “Obviously the red flags are unfortunate. No one wants to see that. But hopefully what fans will really remember about this race tomorrow and years to come is that dramatic finish.”

Track workers and pavement experts tried several different ways to get the hole filled. None of them worked.

The initial fix took 1 hour, 40 minutes, and the drivers then completed 36 laps on the repaired superspeedway before the patchwork broke up. The second repair lasted 44 minutes. In that one, workers gathered up polyester resin products from teams, mixed it with a hardener and then heated it with blowtorches and jet dryers to turn the putty mixture into a hardened substance.

They raced the final 32 laps without any noticeable issues.

“This is a bad predicament to be in — for NASCAR, the fans, for everybody,” driver Kyle Busch said as he waited.

It was unclear how or when the hole developed. Braig said it could have been caused by cars set low for better aerodynamics. He also said no problems showed up during a pre-race inspection.

This much was certain: Heavy rain and cooler-than-normal temperatures — it was 44 degrees on the shaded part of the track — didn’t allow the fixes to work. The biggest problem might have been the location of the hole, which is about where right-side tires run when cars are on the inside of the track.

Officials initially stopped the race with 78 laps remaining in the 200-lap opener. Cars parked on pit road for about 30 minutes, then NASCAR allowed drivers to get out of their cockpits for a break.

The 2½-mile, high-banked superspeedway was last paved in 1978 and is scheduled for $20 million repaving in 2012. But Braig said it could be moved up if necessary.

Earnhardt has been among the track’s biggest critics, often saying it was long overdue for a new surface. He reiterated his stance during the first break Sunday, saying there was about “2½ miles of hole.”

“It’s so damn slick,” he said. “It shouldn’t be like this. It’s 2010.”

But several drivers like the slickness the old pavement provides. New pavement could mean considerably different racing at Daytona and significant cost during tough economic times.

“It may not need repaving,” Braig said. “We don’t want to paint the whole house when all we have to do is a little touch up.”