How Penske's rookie sensation opened NASCAR's new era in style
After holding his nerve and hip-checking his teammate on the run to the line, Austin Cindric made a perfect start to life as a full-timer in the NASCAR Cup Series by winning the Daytona 500. Here's how the Penske Ford man emerged first across the line in the first points-scoring race for the much-anticipated Next Generation cars
The 64th running of the Daytona 500 took three-and-a-half hours to complete but came down, as it so often does, to the final seconds. Austin Cindric – on his team boss Roger Penske's 85th birthday – elbowed his teammate Ryan Blaney into the wall and then fended off Toyota's Bubba Wallace by 0.036s for a remarkable victory.
On the debut of the Next Gen car in NASCAR's Cup Series, and in front of a packed house of over 120,000 fans, it was 'next-gen driver' Cindric – running full-time in the series as a rookie for one of America's finest teams – who galloped with the hounds all day to become the second-youngest driver to win America's Great Race at the age of 23.
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