MOTORSPORT: Penske glory in Daytona 500

Roger Penske will come to the start of the V8 Supercar Championship in Adelaide this week in his best winning form, having guided his 24-year-old NASCAR driver Joey Logano to victory in today's Daytona 500.

Chevrolets dominated the classic that opens the NASCAR season but the Penske Ford prevailed at the finish of what is known as The Great American Race.

The success gave Logano a feeling he said was "better than going to Disney World".

The Daytona 500 is the biggest US motorsport event, years ago having overtaken the open-wheeler Indianapolis 500 in terms of its TV audience.

Just two days after Penske's 78th birthday, it was the second win in the February race on the high-banked 2.5-mile (4km) tri-oval superspeedway for the legendary team owner – his first was with Ryan Newman in 2008 – and comes on top of his record 15 Indy 500 wins.

Penske is now the majority owner of Australia's longest-established touring car team, Dick Johnson Racing, which will field dual V8 Supercar champion Marcos Ambrose this season in his return from America after almost a decade in NASCAR.

While Ambrose is playing down his chances of quickly winning races in the DJR Team Penske Ford Falcon FG X, no team owner on the planet is better at getting cars to victory lane than Penske, the man known universally as "The Captain".

He is headed to Australia this week and will oversee Ambrose and his Falcon – like Logano's Fusion, adorned in Shell livery – at Adelaide's Clipsal 500.

Meanwhile, the driver still regarded as Formula One's best, despite not having won a world title since 2006, Fernando Alonso, was concussed in a crash while testing the Honda-powered McLaren MP4-30 in Barcelona yesterday.

Lotus driver Romain Grosjean ended the four-day test fastest on super-soft tyres, while Nico Rosberg was next on medium-compound rubber as Mercedes continued to clock up enormous mileage.

Australia's Daniel Ricciardo handed over Red Bull's RB11 to young Russian teammate Daniil Kyvat for the last two days. The final four-day season test before Melbourne's March 15 Australian Grand Prix begins on Thursday, with Kyvat declaring that Red Bull is making "encouraging steps" and that the RB11 has "plenty of potential".

Jeff Gordon, the four-time NASCAR Cup champion retiring at the end of this season, started from pole position and led 87 laps – almost half the race.

Six-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson had started alongside Gordon, led 39 laps and gave himself a big chance in the second half of the race of winning.

And Dale Earnhardt Junior, last year's victor and son of the legendary "Intimidator" killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, had the fastest Chevvy of all and led 32 laps too, but botched it.

Instead, Joey Logano became the second youngest winner in the 57 years of the event driving a Ford – as Trevor Bayne did in taking his shock victory at 20 in 2011.

The Blue Oval also won the race in the second-tier NASCAR class – now called the Xfinity Series, previously Nationwide – the previous day, and the (Pick-up) Truck Series race two days before.

And four weeks ago a Ford engine in a prototype sports car won the Daytona 24-Hour for Chip Ganassi Racing, the great rival of Team Penske in America.

Logano began his Cup career with the Toyota team of three-time Super Bowl-winning coach Joe Gibbs at 18 but – perceived to have under-achieved there after being nicknamed "Sliced Bread", because he supposedly was better than it – was picked up by Penske in 2013.

That was the year "The Captain" started running Ford stock cars after Dodge pulled out, even though Brad Keselowski and Penske had delivered it a championship in 2012.

Today was Logano's seventh start in the Daytona 500. His previous best finish in the race was ninth in 2009, although he did score his maiden Cup victory later that season.

He came into calculations for the biggest win of his career today in the last 20 laps of the scheduled 200. The race ended up going 203.

Logano's Ford got a big push from Clint Bowyer's Toyota on lap 192 and shot into the lead, but a caution with three laps remaining, and then six minutes sitting idle under a red flag, forced him to fight for the glory one last time in a two-lap sprint to the end.

It was what NASCAR calls a green-white-chequered finish in order of the flags waved.

Logano got a jump on the field at that final restart and the day's sole "Big One" – a multi-car pile-up in which Gordon was embroiled on the final lap – triggered yellow flags again and he crossed the finish line under caution.

Taking the chequered flag immediately behind him was the Stewart-Haas Chevrolet of reigning Cup champion Kevin Harvick, with Earnhardt third, ahead of Denny Hamlin's Toyota and Johnson.

It will be remembered as a race of endless three-wide racing and more penalties than usual because of NASCAR's new high-tech camera monitoring system on pit road.

"I was so nervous pretty much the whole race," Logano said.

"This is my weakest race track, the superspeedways, and we [have] worked so hard at [getting better on] them.

"We knew what we had to do and had a really fast car and just needed to make sure I didn't get snookered on the restarts.

"I tried to stay relaxed, but the red flag gives you time to think about it. Clint Bowyer was the best pusher out there today. I saw them crashing on the backstretch in my mirror.

"It [winning America's biggest race] feels just like the way you dream it."

Logano's teammate Keselowski, third a year ago, had an engine failure after 160 laps, while Gordon's last Daytona 500 ended with him limping across the finish line in 33rd place.

Earnhardt Junior lamented "a real bad decision on that restart with 19 [laps] to go".

"I made a poor choice and got shuffled back and lost a ton of spots," he said.

"I'm real disappointed because the guys gave me the best car and we should have won the race."

Three-time Cup champion Tony Stewart remains winless in 17 Daytona 500s and called it a day early for his third finish of 40th or worse in the past four years after having hit the top wall barely 20 per cent of the way into the race.

"I'll take the blame for that one, 100 per cent my fault," Stewart said.

Toyota driver Matt Kenseth, who had won the previous weekend's shorter non-championship race, also hit the wall at the same point, but made it to the finish, albeit in 35th place.

The Busch brothers didn't start though – Toyota man Kyle crashed in the Xfinity race the previous day, breaking his right leg and left ankle, while Chevrolet driver and 2004 Cup champion Kurt has been suspended indefinitely pending the outcome of domestic violence charges against him.

It was the first Daytona 500 in 15 years without one of the Buschs in the field.

Sam Hornish Junior, a former Penske driver brought out of the wilderness by Richard Petty Motorsports to replace Marcos Ambrose, finished 12th – one place better than the Aussie's best Daytona 500 finish in 2012.

Vettel says Alonso crash 'strange'
Sebastian Vettel was following Fernando Alonso's McLaren-Honda when it crashed exiting the third turn in the Catalunya circuit.

According to the German four-time F1 world champion with Red Bull Racing and successor to Alonso at Ferrari, the Spaniard's car "looked strange".

"The speed was slow – maybe 150kmh. Then he turned right into the wall," Vettel said.

While Alonso was conscious and spoke to doctors at the track, he was suffering concussion and was airlifted to hospital for precautionary checks and kept overnight.

The MP4-30 has been plagued by reliability problems throughout the eight days of pre-season testing.

Alonso had done only 20 laps on the fourth day in Barcelona before his crash just before the lunch break.

It was unclear whether Alonso made a rare mistake or something broke on the car, but McLaren opted not to try to repair it for Jenson Button to continue testing in the afternoon.

"Fernando's accident was just one of those things that happens in testing. Fortunately, he's fine, but was concussed during the accident, which therefore required an overnight stay," McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said.

"While the car wasn't particularly badly damaged, it was enough of an impact to warrant quite a lengthy check of the gearbox and power unit systems.

"Given the time needed to carry out such an analysis we decided to bring the curtain down on our test a few hours earlier than anticipated.

"It's been a tough week for the whole team, but we'll be back [for the final test from Thursday] and pushing harder than ever."

Alonso's fellow Spaniard, Toro Rosso rookie Carlos Sainz Junior, also crashed at the same spot, but was uninjured.

Ferrari has been on the pace generally throughout testing but Vettel was only seventh fastest yesterday. That did better Alonso's stint in the McLaren, but placed him ahead of just one other driver to finish, fellow German Nico Hulkenberg in last year's Force India. But Vettel said: "my feeling with the car is positive".

McLaren did only 124 laps over the four days – seven fewer than Nico Rosberg did for Mercedes yesterday alone.