NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Daytona 500 - Qualifying
Photo Credit: Jared C. Tilton, Getty Images
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Latest from Daytona 500 media day on Tuesday (all times local):

9 a.m. - Daytona International Speedway has sold out all 101,500 seats for the season-opening Daytona 500.

All the seats are new as part of a $400 million "Daytona Rising" redevelopment project. Ticket holders will enjoy permanent and wider seats, five expanded and redesigned entrances, 40 escalators and upgraded amenities throughout the 11 football-field sized neighborhoods in the world's first motorsports stadium.

Premium hospitality, infield admissions and FanZone access still remain for Sunday's race.

8:30 a.m. - Daytona 500 media day has begun, with defending race Joey Logano starting the morning session talking about trying to repeat at NASCAR's most famous track.

The last driver to win back-to-back Daytona 500s was Sterling Marlin in 1994-95.

Logano will try to break the 20-plus-year drought Sunday at Daytona International Speedway. But he has stopped short of trying to do everything the same this week as he did a year ago.

Says Logano: "I've tried that stuff before because you try anything to win a race. It doesn't work. And it's kind of disgusting if you start wearing the same underwear. It's kind of gets nasty pretty quick."

His main focus is on finding more speed. The Joe Gibbs Racing team was dominant in the Sprint Unlimited and stout in pole qualifying. JGR's Denny Hamlin won the exhibition opener, and teammate Matt Kenseth qualified on the outside of the front row. Each of Gibbs' four Toyotas qualified in the top 10.

Logano, who drives a Ford for Team Penske, says the Gibbs cars were impressive the other night.

He adds: "We were pretty good in the Unlimited as well. ... But I thought there were certain scenarios that I thought the Toyotas could do some pretty remarkable moves that we couldn't do, so we want to get better in those areas."

(Story by: Jenna Fryer, Auto Racing Writer, The Associated Press)

 

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