Oval racing often produces super-close finishes, but the season-opening Nascar Xfinity race at Daytona (or ‘PowerShares QQQ 300’, to give the race its proper title) went beyond merely ‘close’ and more towards the realm of ‘ridiculous’.
Elliot Sadler and Tyler Reddick banged wheels on the drag to the line, the final gap registering at a Jerez 1997-esque 0.000 seconds.
With timing unable to declare a winner, officials had to check photo evidence, which showed that Reddick had just edged it in the closest recorded finish in Nascar National Series history.
Better angle for finish call pic.twitter.com/dtNbQsftXY
— Steve O'Donnell (@odsteve) February 17, 2018
As epic as the finish was, it took quite some time getting there. The race went into overtime (yep, that’s a thing in Nascar) five times thanks to a series of crashes, including ‘The Big One’, which involved 18 cars.
