Miscellaneous
The 2005 Daytona 500, the 47th running of the event, was held on February 20, 2005 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida as the first race of the 2005 NASCAR Nextel Cup season. Dale Jarrett won the pole and Jeff Gordon won the race, making this his third Daytona 500 win. Kurt Busch finished second[2] and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. finished third.[2] As the result of NASCAR's implementation of the green-white-checker finish rule the previous season, the race had three extra laps due to a caution with three laps to go, reaching a total distance of 203 laps and 507.5 miles (816.7 km). Because of that, this was the first Daytona 500 to go longer than 500 miles. It was also the first Daytona 500 to end at sunset, around 6:18 pm EST. A crowd of 200,000 people were estimated to have attended this race.