[media-credit name=”Credit: Jerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCAR” align=”alignright” width=”225″]
[/media-credit]John King walked down pit road at Daytona on Friday night to his No. 7 Red Horse Racing Toyota and no one paid any mind.
King, a rookie, would be making just his eighth career start and wasn’t on the map when it came to contenders in the Camping World Truck Series. Most didn’t know his name and some didn’t even know what he looked like before he climbed out of his truck hours later in victory lane.
Starting 23rd King dropped to the back with his teammates looking to avoid the big wrecks. Then as the laps wound down and the field thinned they found themselves near the front of the field. And then after three wild green-white-checkered attempts NASCAR had a new winner.
“It’s unbelievable, a dream come true,” said King.
“I knew what the organization was when we went to Red Horse, I didn’t know how great it was, though. I mean, everything. Toyota is unbelievable, the backing and support you get from them. Joe Gibbs Motors, you can go on for days with the horsepower they’ve got. I’ve never driven anything so smooth in my life as that racetrack. It’s just a dream come true.”
Entering the night King only had one personal expectation and goal: finish the race. Having never raced at Daytona or any superspeedway for that matter, he was looking to just stay out of trouble and log laps. He told the team before the race to help keep him clean and they’ll get whatever they could at the end.
As the race neared is final 15 laps the Red Horse Racing drivers of King, Todd Bodine and Timothy Peters were ready to gang up on the leaders. Following a hard wreck by the dominant truck of Miguel Paludo on lap 84, King was already near the top 10. By lap 90 he was running seventh and soon found himself in a position he never dreamed of.
At the races schedule 100 lap mark King sat fifth as the race went into overtime. On the second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish King was riding behind leader Johnny Sauter and being pushed by Bodine. With the white flag just yards away contact from King sent Sauter into the fence and King to the lead.
“I don’t know that I was getting pushed, all I know was the closing rate was real fast, I couldn’t get off of him,” King said of the incident.
“I’m a rookie. I’ve never pushed in my life. This is my first time at Daytona or any superspeedway. I apologize to him from the bottom of my heart. It wasn’t my intention at all. Without wrecking him, I was good to go. I couldn’t get off of him. Once I got up to him in the tri-oval, that’s all I had.”
Now holding the lead with one more attempt to finish the race coming up, King wasn’t thinking about trying to win the event. He was clearly torn up about the wreck with Sauter as he talked to his team over the radio. It left Chad Kendrick doubling as crew chief and psychologist for his driver.
“I’m telling you, this is probably one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet,” said Kendrick. “When the caution came out, you could hear the concern in his voice, like he was truly almost sad about wrecking Johnny. I told him we’d worry about it at the end of the race. We had a race to run, we still had laps to go. At that point we were legitimate contenders.
“That was Daytona. That happens at Daytona. It’s happened a million times. It will happen again. So we both hate it for Johnny. But it was a racing incident; he was going as hard as he could, Johnny was going as hard as he could. I kept reassuring him it’s fine. It’s a racing incident. Johnny has been around long enough, he understands that. It was okay. Don’t worry about it anymore. Don’t have a second thought about it. Let’s go win it.”
King did. Keeping Peters behind him as he took the white flag and another violet wreck broke out behind. Joey Coulter went airborne into the fence following contact from James Buescher who had been hit by Ron Hornaday. The race was declared over and King was sent to victory lane.
He now leads the points heading into the second race at Martinsville on March 31. Before then though, everyone will be trying to find out who John King is and where he came from. And of course, how he became a winner at Daytona.
“I came off of dirt late models, went to late model stocks after that,” said King. “We’ve run a few truck races. This is feature win No. 3 for my whole career. This is it. I’ve won one dirt late model and one late model stock race. It’s unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine being here. We’re here.”
