Sickness not enough to slow down sixth-place finisher Marcos Ambrose at Daytona
JTG Daugherty Racing's Marcos Ambrose finished sixth in Saturday night's NASCAR Sprint Cup Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Scene
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Sometimes the best tonic for an ailing race car driver is a good finish. And maybe even a good movie.
JTG Daugherty Racing’s Marcos Ambrose was sick as a dog the weekend of the Coke Zero 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway, but after a solid sixth-place finish Saturday night, he was all smiles.
“It makes me feel a lot better,” Ambrose said.
Ambrose said he was helped, too, by watching the racing-themed movies “Talladega Nights” and “Days of Thunder.” Why? Because Ambrose needed to avoid a last-lap accident to claim his fifth top-10 finish of the season.
“I just saw smoke,” Ambrose said. “And I watched Talladega Nights and Days of Thunder, and they told me to head for the smoke. That’s what I did. I just went for the smoke and put the foot down and somehow got through it.”
Ambrose said he was on antibiotics for an illness and even needed an IV before the race. But Ambrose was solid in the race, his second at Daytona and his third on a restrictor-plate track.
“We fought all day at the front, just tried to keep track position,” Ambrose said. “We kept out of trouble at the end and had a great night. For the first year in the Cup series, I’m learning fast, but this drafting business – I made a few [mistakes] out there and picked the wrong lanes and stuff.”
Ambrose perhaps was being hard on himself, for he followed a fourth-place finish at Talladega in April with a top-10 at Daytona.
“I thought we had a great car in the long run," he said. "I was a bit worried on the short runs because we didn’t have the outright speed. We needed to get on old tires. We fought our way through there and held on.”
