Winless in his own Nationwide equipment last year, Busch visited Victory Lane for the fourth time in six races this season, becoming the first driver in series history to win four of the first six.

The victory was Busch’s record sixth at Texas and his record 55th in the Nationwide Series. Brad Keselowski ran second, 2.272 seconds behind the winner. Austin Dillon was third, followed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick.

Contact between Sam Hornish Jr. and Jeremy Clements on Lap 141 changed the complexion of the race and eliminated Hornish, who entered the event as the series leader. From that point on, Busch had the dominant car.

Hornish finished 34th and kept the points lead but saw his advantage over Regan Smith trimmed from 28 points to two.

“It was a tough race,” said Busch, who capped a banner day on which he already had won the pole for Saturday night’s Sprint Cup event.

“It was a good race, but we had to work hard to have a better race car throughout the race. Brad there was strong, and so was Sam, and it just sort of played into our favor there with some of the pit stops and pit strategy.

“At one time, I thought I was fading way too fast, and I was like, ‘Hey, these tires are terrible,’ but we had to save ‘em. We had to wait in order to put on our fresh tires there in the middle of the race. The car was awesome today.”

Keselowski had a straightforward assessment of Busch’s dominance at Texas.

“If you put an elite driver in an elite car, you should get elite results,” Keselowski said.

In a scenario that augured well for Saturday night’s Sprint Cup tires, new tires made an enormous difference on Friday. In caution for debris on Lap 66, Keselowski, Hornish and Busch were among those who opted for fuel only, and those three drivers restarted at the front of the field on Lap 70.

Their stay at the point was short-lived. On Lap 73, Kasey Kahne, on new tires, passed Hornish for the lead. One lap later, Brian Vickers, also on fresh rubber, blew past Hornish into the second position. By Lap 90, Hornish had slipped to ninth, more than eight seconds behind Kahne.

The tradeoff was that Hornish, Keselowski and Busch each had saved an extra set of tires and they took advantage of the new rubber during pit stops under caution for debris on Lap 95. Kahne also changed four tires under the caution, leaving him with one set for the last half of the race.

After the restart on Lap 99, the roles were reserved. Hornish, on new tires, took the green in 16th and stormed through the field, wresting the lead from Matt Kenseth, who had stayed out under the caution, on Lap 107. Having lost several spots with a slow pit stop, Kahne overtook Hornish for the top spot on Lap 111, with Busch and Keselowski in hot pursuit of the two frontrunners.

Busch dispatched both Hornish and Kahne to assume the lead on Lap 115 before caution flew on Lap 120 for Robert Richardson Jr.’s second spin of the race. That shuffled the field again for a restart on Lap 128, with Keselowski quickly taking the lead, followed by Busch and Austin Dillon.

After Hornish’s demise, by the time the lead-lap cars came to pit road under yellow on Lap 168, all contenders were back on equal footing, taking four tires for the run to the finish.

Note: There were 22 lead changes among 11 drivers, both Nationwide Series track records, breaking the marks of 17 and 10 from the spring race of 2005.

Yes, it was Busch’s 25th victory in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Yes, Busch broke a 31-race drought. Yes, Busch gave Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota their first victory at Auto Club Speedway.

Yes, race runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaves California with the Cup series lead, 12 points ahead of 23rd-place finisher Brad Keselowski.

But it was the banging between polesitter Hamlin and Logano — the renewal of a feud that started last Sunday in Bristol — as well as an angry confrontation between Stewart and Logano on pit road that stole attention from Busch’s milestone win. Stewart took umbrage at a block by Logano on the final restart with 11 laps left in the 200-lap event.

“I did win the race today,” Busch quipped. “That might be a story… They (Hamlin and Logano) were so focused on each other that they left the door open.”

His momentum broken by the block, Stewart fell through the field and finished 22nd. Earnhardt was second when caution froze the field on the final lap. Logano was credited with third, followed by Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch, who overcame a brush with the wall and a pit road penalty to post his second straight top five.

Hamlin nosed hard into the inside wall and was credited with a 25th-place finish. The driver of the No. 11 Toyota was airlifted to a local hospital as a precautionary measure. A helicopter was used because of heavy post-race traffic outside the speedway.

As Logano put it later, the driver of the No. 22 Penske Racing Ford was simply trying to do whatever was necessary to win the race. That applied both to the block of Stewart and the battle with Hamlin.

“Racing for the lead — going for the win,” Logano said. “That’s what you’ve got to do… Tony was just upset about a restart, that I was racing him really hard on the bottom trying to make sure I protected my spot. What I was doing actually was I was racing the 18 (Kyle Busch) on the restart and he was spinning his tires.

“The rule is you can’t beat him to the start finish line, so I am pedaling it which gave Tony the run to go underneath me. I wanted to block that because I knew, if he put me three-wide, that would be the end of my race and I wouldn’t win. I was smart enough to realize that. Then I had to just do what I had to do to get to the front and try to win the race.”

Stewart had a substantially different view of the incident.

“For a guy that’s been complaining about how everyone else is driving here, and him to do that, it’s a double standard,” Stewart said. “He makes the choice. He makes the decision to run us down there (to the apron), and when you run a driver down there, you take responsibility for what happens after that.

“He’s a tough guy on pit road, as soon as one of his crew guys gets in the middle of it. Until then, he’s a scared little kid.”

A caution on lap 170 for Marcos Ambrose’s blown left-rear tire followed almost immediately a round of green-flag pit stops and wiped out Busch’s five-second lead over Harvick. That set up a restart on Lap 175 with Busch on the outside and Harvick beside him in the inside lane.

Harvick, however, failed to launch on the restart, allowing Kahne to move into second with Stewart behind him. One lap later, Mark Martin’s spin off Turn 2 brought out the seventh caution and bunched the field for a restart on Lap 181.

Kyle Busch pulled away once again, but the engine in Clint Bowyer’s Toyota exploded on Lap 185, giving cars running ninth on back a chance to pit for fresh tires in hopes of gaining ground on a final charge to the finish.

Kyle Busch paced the field to a restart on Lap 190 with Logano beside him, despite overheating issues that threatened his chances for a strong finish. Stewart was third and Kurt Busch fourth when the field took the green.

Stewart was the biggest loser on the restart, thanks to the block Logano threw on the No. 14 car as the field stormed through Turn 1. Logano got the better of Kyle Busch on lap 194, as Hamlin streaked through the field on fresh tires to move into second.

Just past the finish line on Lap 199, Hamlin moved to the outside of Logano, and the drivers banged doors repeatedly until the contact sent Hamlin spinning and Logano into the outside wall, allowing Kyle Busch to steal the win.

Earnhardt was originally schedule to run the Aaron’s 312 at Talladega Superspeedway in May. Earnhardt Jr will now compete in the Dollar General 300 at Chicagoland Speedway in Sept. Kahne will, in turn, run at Talladega instead of Chicagoland. Both will run Chevys with sponsorship from Great Clips.

Earnhardt Jr said:

Kasey and I were chatting about our Nationwide Series schedules, and I was looking for more track time at a place like Chicago. Kasey mentioned how he would love a shot at winning at Talladega. Fortunately we have a partner like Great Clips that was willing to work with us. One of our 2013 goals at JR Motorsports is to be a better asset to Hendrick Motorsports. For me personally, this scheduling change helps us do just that.

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As Denny Hamlin put it, Carl Edwards is “relevant again” after winning Sunday’s Subway Fresh Fit 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix International Raceway in a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race four laps past its posted distance of 312 laps.

In beating Jimmie Johnson to the finish line by 1.024 seconds, Edwards broke a winless streak that had reached 70 races, dating to Mar. 6, 2011 at Las Vegas. Remarkably, Edwards broke another 70-race drought at the one-mile track in the Sonoran desert when he won at Phoenix in November 2010.

Behind Edwards and Johnson, Denny Hamlin ran third, making the most of a daredevil move that cut the backstretch dogleg on the last lap and got his No. 11 Toyota past the No. 2 Ford of reigning series champion Brad Keselowski, who came home fourth.

It was Keselowski, though, driving a Ford after Penske Racing’s between-season switch from Dodge, who gave Edwards the push that propelled him to the front on the final restart on Lap 315.

For his part, Edwards hopes the momentum of his 20th career victory continues throughout the season.

“When you’re struggling, it seems like time slows down,” Edwards said after being told of Hamlin’s “relevant” comment. “You’re working harder, you’re trying more, you’re questioning yourself more. … (Last year) was one of the longest years of my life, to work that hard and not get the victories.

“I’m very, very happy to be back in the mix here. A victory is huge for so many reasons. Last year we didn’t make the Chase. For me to sit home, while everybody was at the Chase stuff in Vegas—that was a little bit of a shock to me. I did not like that at all.

“So to get a victory helps us be in a better position for the Chase. It just feels good to win. So, yeah, I hope  Denny’s right. I hope we’re relevant or more than relevant all year. I hope we dominate this thing.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fifth, losing his winning chances when he spun his tires on the penultimate restart on Lap 243. Clint Bowyer, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton rounded out the top 10.

Edwards No. 99 Ford Fusion led 67 straight green-flag laps after the restart on Lap 243, but Ken Schrader’s crash on Lap 309 sent the race to overtime and gave the crew chiefs of the leading cars nervous moments as they tried to recalculate fuel mileage.

The top-14 cars stayed out for a restart on Lap 315, and Edwards had enough gas to complete two laps and win the race.

On the last two restarts, Johnson felt Edwards played fast and loose with the zone, delineated by red marks on the wall, within which the leader is required to accelerate.

“I felt like Carl didn’t follow the restart protocol and was slower than the pace car on his last two restarts, and it gives the leader a huge advantage when that happens,” Johnson said. “You’re supposed to wait until you get between the two lines and take off, and this was all going on before (the restart zone).”

Naturally enough, Edwards had a completely different view of the restart. Though Johnson said he made a point of maintaining pace car speed, Edwards thought Johnson was speeding up as the cars approached the start.

“Usually the guy in second hangs back a little bit, and he pulled up there and I thought, ‘Why’s he doing that?’” Edwards said. “Yeah, maybe I was slowing down, but I wasn’t trying to. I thought he was speeding up. I thought it was pretty genius what he was doing, because it kind of got me off of my game.

“But then, when I went, I think he maybe wasn’t looking at me or something, because he waited just a little bit too long to go. But, truthfully, that was not by design. I was not trying to do anything tricky. I thought he was.”

Danica Patrick’s hard crash on Lap 185 caused the sixth caution of the race. The right front tire on Patrick’s No. 10 Chevrolet SS exploded without warning as the car rolled through Turn 4. The car bounced off the outside wall into the path of David Ragan’s Ford.

The resulting collision ripped the driver’s-side door off Patrick’s car and knocked the protective foam out of the door frame. Patrick walked away from the wreck but ended the day in 39th place.

That caution, however, proved a boon to her former car owner, Earnhardt, who was first off pit road for a restart on Lap 194. Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevy took a liking to the clean air and remained on point, pacing teammate Johnson as the Hendrick Motorsports pair opened a one-second lead over Matt Kenseth in third.

Forty laps into the green-flag, Earnhardt had widened his edge over Johnson to .928 seconds before the yellow flag flew on Lap 236 for David Gilliland’s hard contact with the outside wall in Turn 1, the result of another blown right front tire.

That caution, the seventh of the race, put Kyle Busch back on the lead lap. Busch went a lap down after spinning into the Turn 2 wall on Lap 48 and persevered until he was awarded a free pass as the highest-scored lapped car when Gilliland wrecked.

Busch had started at the rear of the field because of an eleventh-hour engine change Sunday morning. The engine in his No. 18 Camry suffered a part failure during warmup, the result of a reassembly error.

The victory was the 61st of Johnson’s career in his 400th start in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and his second win in NASCAR’s most prestigious race.

Earnhardt finished second for the third time in the last four Daytona 500s. Mark Martin ran third, followed by defending series champion Brad Keselowski and Ryan Newman. Greg Biffle ran sixth and Regan Smith seventh.

Polesitter Danica Patrick came home eighth, the best-ever finish by a woman in the Daytona 500.

With tandem racing all but absent in the points race for the new Gen-6 race cars, passing was difficult and track position paramount.

“You can’t ride and wait for things to happen,” Johnson said. “You have to race all day long and fight for track position. This race car, this Lowe’s Chevrolet was so good. (Crew chief) Chad Knaus and all of Hendrick Motorsports had me a fast car, and I could really stay up front all day long. I had a lot of confidence in the final few laps leading the train, (because) I knew just how fast the car was.”

Earnhardt got a strong push from Martin on the last lap, but couldn’t catch Johnson off the final corner.

“I couldn’t have done much without Mark helping me here at the end,” said Earnhardt, who was fourth at the white flag. “I was hoping he was thinking what I was thinking as we come off of Turn 2 on that last lap. I felt like we needed to make the move a little earlier than off (Turn) 4.

“I kept backing up, backing up, trying not to let guys get racing behind us too much. If somebody ducked out of line a couple rows behind Mark, I was going to have a gap, (and) me and Mark could take off, not get hung up with those guys. Once we come off of 2, mashed the gas, got a run on Danica, side-drafted her a little bit.

“I don’t know why them guys didn’t pull down in front of me besides Jimmie, but we got through 3 and 4 with a pretty good run. Once we come to Turn 4, we kind of run out of steam, didn’t have enough to get a run on Jimmie.”

After a restart on Lap 182, following the fifth caution of the race for Jeff Burton’s hard contact with the outside wall at the entrance to the tri-oval, Keselowski and Johnson ran side-by-side at the front of the pack, trading the lead as their respective lanes gained momentum.

A caution for debris on Lap 192 set up the six-lap dash to the finish with Johnson in the lead in the outside lane.

Patrick made history when she led the field to green from the pole position. On Lap 90, she reached another milestone. Surging to the lead after a restart, she paced the field on Laps 90 and 91, and, in doing so, became the first female driver to lead a lap in the Daytona 500 and the first female to lead a green-flag Lap in the Cup series.

(Janet Guthrie led Laps 43 through 47 under caution in the Nov. 20, 1977, Los Angeles Times 500 at Ontario Motor Speedway, the only five laps she led in 33 career Cup starts.)

Later in the race, Patrick led three more laps, for a total of five, to tie Guthrie’s five.

Despite the success, Patrick was reluctant to reset expectations for her rookie season in the Cup series.

“I think that would be unwise to sort of start telling myself that top 10 is where we need to be every week,” said Patrick, who was third with one lap left but fell to eighth in the last-lap scramble. “I think that’s setting up for failure. The list of drivers in the Cup series is deep. This is a unique track. These (restrictor-plate) tracks are different and unique. (It’s) a lot about the car.

“I mean, you have to be smart enough to do the right thing at the right time, but it’s very much about the car. I feel like I’m still sticking to ‘Let’s see how these first five races go,’ where we go to a bunch of different kinds of tracks, see where we settle in, start to establish goals from there on out.”

The Toyota Camrys of Joe Gibbs Racing were running 1-2-3 as the race neared the three-quarter mark, with Matt Kenseth pacing Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch. On Lap 150, however, Kenseth, who led four times for a race-high 86 laps, brought his car to pit road, having felt a vibration in the drive train. Busch parked his car two laps later, with a blown engine.

That left Hamlin at the point as the field ran single-file behind him, in a lull before the late-race pyrotechnics.

A nine-car accident on Lap 138, thinned an already depleted field. With most cars running single-file around the top of the track, Keselowski tapped David Reutimann and dropped abruptly to the apron in Turn 1.

That triggered a melee as cars checked up behind Keselowski. Carl Edwards was a victim of the accident, as ill fortune at Daytona continued to haunt the driver who already had wrecked four cars at Daytona this year.

Other casualties included 2011 Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., making his first start as a full-time Cup driver in the No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Fusion.

The first major wreck of the race — on Lap 33 as the double-file lead pack of cars exited the tri-oval — dashed the hopes of former Daytona 500 winners Kevin Harvick and Jamie McMurray, as well as those of pre-race favorites Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne.

As the field stacked up toward Turn 1, Kyle Busch tagged the back of Kahne’s car, turning Kahne into Juan Pablo Montoya’s Chevrolet SS and igniting a nine-car incident that also damaged the cars of Keselowski, Kurt Busch and Casey Mears.

Keselowski suffered damage to the both sides of his Ford, pinballing off both Montoya and Harvick, but was able to continue. Kurt Busch lost a lap on pit road with the nose of his Chevy caved in from contact during the wreck. Casey Mears, who had qualified 17th, also sustained significant damage.

Note: Other drivers who have won their 400th Cup starts include Lee Petty, Richard Petty, David Pearson, Dave Marci’s and Dale Earnhardt.

As Stewart dodged the crash and crossed the finish line, the front clip of Larson’s car sheared off, ripping the engine out of its compartment. The front suspension and engine ended up on the walkway at the bottom of the stands.

A tire from Larson’s car also flew into the grandstands.

Regan Smith led as the cars approached the checkered flag, but Smith tried to block Brad Keselowski, who was running second, and turned across the nose of Keselowski’s car.

Daytona International Speedway president Joie Chitwood III indicated that 14 spectators were transported to medical facilities off-property and 14 others were treated on site.

“First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers are with our race fans,” Chitwood said. “On the incident, we responded appropriately according to our safety protocols and had emergency medical personnel at the incident immediately.

“We transported 14 people off property and treated 14 people at our on-track care center.”

Chitwood referred questions about the conditions of the injured fans to Halifax Medical Center.

“I’d have to refer you to Halifax for any of the conditions of the patients,” Chitwood said.

Byron Cogdell, spokesperson from Halifax Health, said seven spectators had been transported to Halifax Medical with injuries related to the accident, five more spectators for other issues. Two of the injured spectators, one adult and one child, were in critical condition, though all patients were listed as stable.

The adult who was in critical condition was suffering from head trauma, Cogdell said. Halifax has not released the names of the injured pending notification of and consent from their families.

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing operations, said all drivers involved in the last-lap crash had been treated and released from the infield care center.

As Chitwood and O’Donnell spoke, and with Sunday’s Daytona 500 17 hours away, track workers continued the process of repairing the fencing in the area of the crossover gate, approximately 75 yards short of the start/finish line at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

“We’re very confident that we’ll be ready for (Sunday’s) event, with the 55th running of the Daytona 500,” O’Donnell said. “But, as with any of these incidents, we’ll conduct a thorough review. We’ll work closely with the tracks as with all our events, learn what we can and see what we can apply in the future.”

The emergency in the grandstand tempered Stewart’s fifth victory in his last six February races at Daytona and the 11th Nationwide Series win of his career.

“Fortunately, with the way the event’s equipped up, there were plenty of emergency workers ready to go, and they jumped in on it pretty quickly,” NASCAR president Mike Helton told ESPN. “And right now, it’s just a function of trying to determine what all damage is done.

“They’re moving folks, as we’ve seen, to care centers and taking some folks over to Halifax Medical (Center), so we’ll be able to update later on, but right now, all we know is everybody’s working real hard on determining what all happened.”

Larson climbed from his car almost immediately and was evaluated and released from the infield care center.

Drivers, Larson included, were more concerned with the safety of the fans than the outcome of the race.

“The important thing is what’s going on on the frontstretch right now,” Stewart said after climbing from his car. “We’ve always known since racing was started this is a dangerous sport. But it’s hard. We assume that risk. It’s hard when the fans get caught up in it.

“As much as we want to celebrate right now, as much as this is a big deal to us, I’m more worried about the drivers and fans in the stands right now. I could see it all in the mirror and it didn’t look good from where I was either.”

Smith said he wasn’t about to surrender the victory to Keselowski 200 yards from the finish line, but his first thoughts were with the injured spectators.

“Everybody the only thing I’m concerned about right now is the people in the stands,” Smith posted to his Twitter account after the race. “Praying for all who were affected by the accident.”

Keselowski echoed the concern and said he understood Smith’s attempt to block his move.

“We made a move to try and win the race,” Keselowski said. “We were in the catbird seat. Regan was in a good spot. He was first and I was second, and we were pushing. I kind of had the run and the move to win the race, and Regan obviously tried to block it, and that’s understandable.

Sam Hornish Jr. crossed the stripe in second place, followed by rookie Alex Bowman, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Parker Kligerman.

The last-lap wreck wasn’t the only serious incident of the event. A 13-car wreck in Turns 1 and 2, triggered by contact between the No. 43 Ford Mustang of Michael Annett and the No. 3 Chevrolet Camaro of Austin Dillon — both championship hopefuls — stopped the race after 116 laps and set up the finish.

Annett was transported to Halifax Health Medical Center. Richard Petty Motorsports later reported that Annett, whose car slammed the outside wall nose-first, was treated for bruising on his chest and received a CT scan. He remains in the hospital for further observation.

On the last lap in what was the debut race for NASCAR’s Gen-6 race car, Harvick blocked Stewart on the inside and moved back up the track to block Biffle, who was perilously close to sending Harvick’s No. 29 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet into the fence.

Biffle ran second, Joey Logano took third, and Stewart — his momentum broken by Harvick’s block — finished fourth. Matt Kenseth finished fifth in his first competition for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Harvick’s victory was his third in five races, following back-to-back wins in 2009 and 2010. Though Harvick will leave RCR at the end of the season to drive for Stewart-Haas Racing next year, he said the impending job change is of no consequence on the track.

“I think it’s one of those deals, where, for us, it’s about winning races,” Harvick said in Victory Lane. “The politics and everything are one thing, but when we get to the race track, it’s about sitting in this race car, making it as fast as it will go.”

Harvick may not have had the fastest car — in fact, he thought the Stewart’s Chevy SS and Kenseth’s Camry were slightly better — but he made the critical moves at precisely the right times, particularly when it came to blocking Biffle.

“In the middle segment, I could tell that Biffle was backing up and trying to time what his move was going to be as we got further into the segment,” Harvick said. “So I was working on my timing to kind of back up and block that.

“Those guys (Biffle and Logano) were coming on the outside, and I don’t know if the 14 (Stewart) and the 16 (Biffle) were side-by-side, but I just felt like I needed to move up and block that momentum, and we were able to block two of those moves.”

Biffle said he thought about trying the outside lane entering the final corner but wasn’t sure he had enough room.

“I thought about sticking it in there, and it just didn’t look like it was going to work to me,” Biffle said. “It looked like it would be sparks and parts flying. He shut the door on the top. That’s what Kevin needed to do to win the race. I looked in the mirror and didn’t have anyone pushing me.”

An incident-free 25-lap second segment, won by Harvick over Biffle, set the starting order for the final 20-lap dash for the victory. By the end of the segment both Carl Edwards and Dale Earnhardt Jr. had lost touch with the 10-car pack ahead of them, but caution between the second and final segments bunched the field for a restart on Lap 56 of 75.

The first segment, on the other hand, featured plenty of action.

On Lap 15, the halfway point, a nine-car incident ruined the winning chances of nearly a third of the field. Stewart turned down across the nose of Marcos Ambrose’s Ford near the apex of Turns 1 and 2. Stewart saved his No, 14 Chevrolet, but drivers behind him checked up, seeing sparks trailing from the rear of Stewart’s car.

The ensuing wreck destroyed the cars of Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin. Martin Truex Jr.’s Toyota was nicked in the melee, but he was able to continue, as were Stewart and Ambrose.

In fact, Stewart’s car was fast to enough to take the lead on the final lap of the first segment, and he held it to the finish line. During the planned caution between segments, the 12 remaining cars came to pit road for mandatory four-tire stops — a requirement dictated by a fan vote.

Fans voted to set the starting lineup for the race according to the chronological order in which drivers won their poles. That put 2012 Daytona 500 pole winner Edwards in the top starting spot and Martin, winner of the pole at Phoenix the following week, on the outside of the front row.

Both Edwards and Martin, however, had to drop to the rear for the start, because neither driver practiced his back-up car after a wreck in Friday’s opening Sprint Unlimited practice forced a change of equipment. Accordingly, Kasey Kahne led the field to green, with Biffle beside him.

This will be Johnson’s first Nationwide Series race since 2011.

Johnson said:

I appreciate Junior letting me run one of his cars. My goal is to make my team owner so proud that, perhaps, he’ll invite me back more often than once every two years. In all seriousness, this is a great opportunity for me to get more familiar with the new configuration at PIR. Not only do we race there twice in Cup, but both races are in crucial spots on the schedule for Team Lowe’s Racing. I appreciate JR Motorsports and Great Clips giving me this opportunity, and I hope to not disappoint my team owner.

Kasey Kahne and Brad Sweet will also drive the No. 5 car in select races.

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But, the team is not worried, as they don’t think it will be too hard to find sponsorship for NASCAR’s most popular driver. Hendrick says there is plenty of interest, but they’re looking for a sponsor who will work with the team beyond 2013.

Hendrick said:

The way we’re positioned, the car is covered until the end of the summer. I don’t have a deadline [for a deal]. I’m not looking at a timeline. I’m looking at the right deal.

He indicated that they’re close on two or three deals but nothing has been finalized.

The National Guard is set to sponsor the No. 88 for 20 races in 2013. Diet Mountain Dew sponsored the car for 16 races in 2012, but announced last season that they would be cutting back their sponsorship. 

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Dale Jr said:

Richard Petty is a role model for me and every other driver in NASCAR. I am honored to be working with him and thankful Goody’s brought us together. I signed on with Goody’s in part because of their long-term commitment to NASCAR. They helped start the trend of non-car companies coming into the sport. In my mind, they are synonymous with NASCAR racing. I am also a big fan of their product because it works so fast.