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Truck Series: Tex Perry's Daytona Week 1 Review
The #29 Cheez-It Chevy team continued to celebrate in Gatorade Victory Lane at Daytona well into the wee hours of the morning. Not only had Ben Geer made his first NR2003 trip to Victory Lane but he did it in "Michael Waltrip" style. He won his first career race in the biggest of the season. In a race that officially only saw 2 caution periods, racing was extremely close all through the field. Until green flag pitstops you could have spit at the first truck and just missed the last one. TEX Perry captured the pole at the famed 2.5 mile superspeedway with Tony Pizzaro to his outside. At the drop of the green Tex jumped out to what he had hoped would be his first lap led of the Fall.Winter season. While just behind him Tim McDonnell had jumped to the upper lane just in front of Pizzaro and officially led the first 3 laps of the season. The two continued to run side-by-side for the first 4 laps until Tex just edged ahead of the 31. Many wondered if these first laps would set the pace for the entire season to come. Shortly thereafter Tex dropped to the apron as the field took to the backstretch and relegated himself to the back of the field. Approaching the first pitstops of the day the first of 2 cautions flew when initial leader Tim McDonnell was bounced into the outside wall almost destroying the rear of his truck. Teams patched him up and Tim would remain a contender all night long. Teams would have to dodge trucks for most of the middle of the race when 2 non-caution producing wrecks regulated good trucks to the rear of the field. The
later of these 2 incidents happened when JT Armstrong(admitting fault in the incident) would get turned off the front of another truck and spin to the infield just past pit road. JT would never recover from going a lap down. The final green flag stops would set up the #29 in
front with the #56 of defending champion Rod Weston behind him coming off pit road. Though Rod would fight hard to defend his Daytona performance from last season Ben would hold on to gain not only the points lead heading into Martinsville, next week, but his first ever NR2003 win and one for the record books.
