2009 Daytona 500 - Defending Champions

Defending Champions

For the first time since 1981, the defending race champion driver and team have been split. Ryan Newman, the champion driver, now will drive for Stewart Haas Racing in the #39 US Army Chevrolet Impala with sponsorship from the U.S. Army. The team that he won with, Penske Racing, will field the #12 Dodge Charger with David Stremme behind the wheel.

The #12 is currently without a sponsor, peruse to NASCAR's enforcement of the "Viceroy Rule," which was imposed by former NASCAR series sponsor R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company by prohibiting rival cigarette manufacturers from advertising in series which they sponsor. Under the agreement between Nextel Communications (the predecessor to Sprint) and NASCAR signed in 2003, rival wireless telecommunications companies may not enter the sport; companies that had been involved would be permitted provided no name change or team change took place. The Cellco Partners' (a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone) purchase of Alltel (which had sponsored Newman from 2000–2008, and the #12 team since 2002) terminates the grandfather clause that allowed the sponsor to remain under the terms of the 2003 Nextel-NASCAR agreement.

(It should be known the rule does not affect Cellco's sponsorship of NASCAR Nationwide Series cars because Nationwide is an insurance company, not a wireless carrier. Accordingly, in 2008, Chase Miller was able to drive a Cellco Partners-sponsored Dodge Charger in that series. However, two rival insurance sponsors, Farm Bureau and GEICO, were tossed by Nationwide's enforcement of the Viceroy Rule.)

The last time a driver and team split was when Buddy Baker drove for Harry Ranier Racing in winning the 1980 event, but the next year was the driver of Hoss Ellington's #1.

Former winners Kevin Harvick (2007), Michael Waltrip (2001, 2003), Jeff Gordon (1997, 1999, 2005), Bill Elliott (1985, 1987), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (2004), Jimmie Johnson (2006), and Ryan Newman (2008) did race in the event finishing second, seventh, thirteenth, twenty-third, twenty-seventh, thirty-first, and thirty-sixth respectively. Derrike Cope (1990) and Geoff Bodine (1986), also former winners, failed to qualify.