Tony Stewart has won the Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway for the fifth time in the last six years.

Stewart was in total control after a 10-car accident took contender Dale Earnhardt Jr. out of the race with a frightening flip down the superstretch.

It opened it up for Stewart to move into the lead, and he was unchallenged over the final 24 laps.

The action was instead behind him, as Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Justin Allgaier raced three-wide toward the finish line for second.

It was an expensive day for Earnhardt, who had both his cars destroyed. Danica Patrick was involved in an earlier 10-car accident that ruined her NASCAR debut. Earnhardt was involved in a frightening, multi-car accident as his car flipped upside down as he skidded along the superstretch.

Earnhardt was battered from every direction as other cars could not avoid hitting the overturned No. 88 Chevrolet. He slid through the grass, and the car finally flipped back onto its wheels before coming to a stop.

“You don’t want to flip one upside down and it not be spectacular. You don’t want to waste your opportunity, right?” Earnhardt joked after the mandatory ambulance ride to the care center.

“It’s good to flip upside down every once in a while, but it’s just too expensive for me.”

JR Motorsports is short on sponsorship money but committed to running a full season. Patrick was making her Nationwide Series debut for JR Motorsports, so the two accidents left Earnhardt with a pair of wrecked race cars.

“We’re going to have to go back and balance our books after that. This has been a rough day for JR Motorsports,” he said. “We do our books by the month pretty much, and kind of know where we are financially. We were looking for about $400,000 between now and the end of the season, trying to work that in somehow and find that or cut that somewhere.

“We just knocked ourselves back a few steps. It was an expensive day for us.”

Patrick was running 21st when several cars wrecked in front of her. She tried to duck low to avoid the spinning cars but was unable to dodge everything, slamming into the outside wall.

Her car then spun through the grass, but Patrick regained control and drove to the pits. Her crew pushed the car back to the garage with heavy damage to the front.

Saturday’s race was Patrick’s NASCAR debut. She completed last week’s ARCA event at Daytona, and felt comfortable enough to move her NASCAR debut up a week to the Nationwide season-opener.

She’s also scheduled to run the next two Nationwide races, at California and Las Vegas.

Below are the official race results:

*Rookie