Points Leader Regan Smith comes up just short of victory at Daytona International Speedway

Coming to the Green-White-Checkered, Regan Smith had things going as he wanted to them go in leading the race with Joey Logano on his bumper for the restart so he could get ahead of the field.

“We had the restart we wanted to get and came off of two and I cleared everybody,” he commented post-race. “They got three-wide and all shook up and I was just trying to give a little air to all of three lanes – I wanted to keep them side-by-side if I could. They got double file going into three and I looked up and I still thought we were okay. For whatever reason, a lot of runs were coming off the corner so I figured that there’d be a run coming and went up to block the 42 (Kyle Larson) a little bit, but didn’t want to give him the bottom because I was afraid someone was going to get there.”

Though while Smith was focused on stopping Larson and Logano, Kasey Kahne would shoot up through the pack after starting eighth and just nip Smith at the line by 0.021 seconds.

“It was kind of bittersweet,” Smith said. “I’m disappointed for my guys and selfishly disappointed, but I’m happy for JR Motorsports. The 9 (Chase Elliott) car was strong all night – don’t know what happened to him. It’s kind of a weird mix of emotions right now – happy for the company, but frustrated for myself.”

While Smith was focusing on what he needed to do, everybody else was focusing on whether he would be able to make it on field as his teammate Elliott had run out of gas on the previous restart. Smith said it was pretty easy not to worry as he didn’t have the numbers in front of him.

“I saw (crew chief) Ryan (Pemberton) after the race and he said he chewed about six Goody’s Powders and a bottle of whatever because of his stomach being in knots,” Smith added. “It was the only play that we had as you had to be outfront as you couldn’t get the run going on the outside to get there. our car out front had a lot of strength. I noticed in practice the guys couldn’t get a good run on us, but when we were mixing it up in the pack it wasn’t as strong as it needed to be. It wasn’t a tough decision for me.”

In reflecting post-race in what transpired the final laps, Smith said that he doesn’t know what he would’ve done different – if anything – based on what he saw in his mirror. However, said that he’d probably beat himself up till about 2 o’ clock that night in possibilities of what he could have done.

Though while he didn’t pick up the win, Smith takes over the points lead and is one of the drivers that has a shot at some bonus cash heading into this weekend at New Hampshire as part of the Nationwide’s “Dash for Cash” program.

“Its going to be new for me,” Smith commented. “I think this was the stretch last year that we sucked and it was relatively miserable. New Hampshire is a track that I look forward to going to and just happy to be apart of it and happy to have a series sponsor like Nationwide Insurance that does what they do. We’re going to get out there and get a little extra attention and run for some extra money. It shows the commitment that Nationwide has to this series and what it means to them.”