Race
The race started under the yellow flag for 15 laps due to wet conditions after overnight rain the night before the race. Donnie Allison lost control of his car on lap 32 (of 200 laps) and forced Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison to take evasive action. All three cars spun through the backstretch infield which was slippery and muddy after a morning rain. Yarborough was forced to repair his car, and fell two laps behind the leader.
Following the yellow the race swelled into a huge 18-car battle. Neil Bonnett, driving an Oldsmobile, raced into the lead but was soon challenged by Bobby Allison trying to unlap himself and rookie Dale Earnhardt. A six-car crash eliminated David Pearson and others, then Donnie Allison raced to unlap himself, and did so when Bonnett blew a tire and spun in traffic. Past halfway Donnie assumed the lead but Cale Yarborough used more cautions to make up his laps.
Read more about this topic: 1979 Daytona 500
Famous quotes containing the word race:
“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature—were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes 9:11.