With a Raybestos Rookie class dominated by twenty-somethings, the spotlight was on youth vs. the veterans as the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series opened its 12th season Friday night at Daytona International Speedway.

Old age and experience, however, carried the day.

Mark Martin, 47, became the fifth past-40 winner of a race that has seen just one competitor under the age of 30 visit Victory Lane at the 2.5-mile superspeedway. Carl Edwards, 24 when he won in 2004, is the lone exception.

Martin joins a veterans winners' list that includes Mike Wallace, Joe Ruttman, Robert Pressley, Rick Crawford and Bobby Hamilton. Friday's top five - Martin, Todd Bodine, Ted Musgrave, Mike Skinner and Jack Sprague - followed a familiar Daytona pattern. All are past 40; Musgrave is 50.

The best among the under-30 contingent was Martin's teammate, Erik Darnell, 23, who finished sixth in his Daytona debut. Darnell lost track position early when he pitted his Woolrich Ford to cure overheating problems but raced back through the pack to challenge the leaders.

"As a rookie here, it was pretty amazing," said the winner of Roush's "Driver X" gong show competition. "To come out of the box the way we ran tonight, I'm hoping it will be a sign of good things to come for the rest of the year."

Martin became the series' 15th different winner in 26 races since the start of the 2005 season.

The GM FlexFuel 250 was comprised of 36 fulltime teams for the first time in NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series history. A number of new teams faced the pressure of timing their way into the field - among them the new Wood Brothers-JTG entries driven by Stacy Compton and Jon Wood. Compton qualified third with Wood fourth.

Veteran Kelly Sutton, backed by veteran crew chief Gary Showalter, turned in a solid lap that ranked 20th among 42 entrants. The effort, however, amounted to a nail-biter as Sutton claimed the 36th and final starting position by .024 second, which bumped Chad McCumbee.

Sutton appeared headed for a career best finish racing her way up to 12th before engine failure sent her Team Copaxone Chevrolet to the garage after 88 laps.

Twenty-one lead changes - roughly one every five laps - still amounted to the second-fewest swaps of the No. 1 position in seven editions of the Daytona event. The race average is 23.7.

Terry Cook's 10th-place finish marked his sixth top-10 performance in seven Daytona starts. Cook ended the 2005 season with a single top 10 in his final 12 races. Friday's race was the debut of three-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Dennis Conner as the crew chief of the Ford Power Stroke Diesel by International Ford.

While shut out of Victory Lane for the third year, Toyota brass went back to California with smiles on their faces. Five Tundras wound up in the top 10 - four among the top five.

Chevrolet, conversely, had a difficult evening with a best finish of 13th turned in by 2003-05 championship runnerup Dennis Setzer's FlexFuel E85 Silverado.

Ford has four wins at Daytona to Dodge's three.

Todd Bodine became the fourth different driver to go for four consecutive wins and like Mike Skinner, Ron Hornaday Jr. and Greg Biffle he came up short. Still, second place wasn't bad. Bodine had downplayed the record but admitted keeping the string intact had been on his mind.

"I'm not going to lie to you. It's disappointing not to win the fourth in a row and set the record," he said. "You know, everybody all week has been asking the question, 'Can you keep the momentum going that you had last year? Can you keep it in stride?'

"We came out (strong) tonight. We not only kept it in stride, we picked it up. This race team didn't keep in step. They picked it up, got second and third. We've got to be pleased with that."