Sporting News · May 29, 2016
Only NASCAR’s best drivers win Charlotte’s Coca-Cola 600
Kevin Harvick (Getty Images) CONCORD, N.C. — Upsets don’t happen in the Coca-Cola 600.
They just don’t. At least not very often.
There have been two in the past 10 years — Casey Mears in 2007 and David Reutimann in 2009. Mears won on fuel mileage; Reutimann waited out a rain delay.
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Before then, it had been a long, long time since an unexpected driver won NASCAR’s longest race, probably all the way back to the inaugural event in 1960, when Joe Lee Johnson lucked into the second and last victory of his career.
Only NASCAR’s very best and truly elite drivers win the sport’s ultimate test of man versus machine.