The Daytona 500

Well, another Great American Race has come and gone and who wasn’t cheering for Mark Martin at the end!!! I can’t believe they didn’t throw the yellow flag. I am completely torn by the result. On the one hand, would I want anything else then a battle to the finish? Of course not, it’s what racing is all about and lord knows that Mark wouldn’t want a gimme and any time of the year. On the other hand, boy it would have been nice if the old man captured a Daytona 500. But you have to give Harvick a lot of credit for making that move at the end. During the red flag and the ensuing green, the commentators barely mentioned Harvick as a threat. I don’t even think they had him on their radar. But there he goes, on the outside charging hard and barely finishing ahead of Martin at the checker. A spectacular finish to an event that, aside from the last 50 laps, was relatively quiet and some time mundane. But boy did those last 50 laps make up for it. That last lap crash was nothing short of spectacular. They wanted the Big One, they got it. I think a car crossing the finishing line upside down and on fire constitutes as a ‘big one’. Amazing that nobody got hurt and I will give NASCAR a lot of credit on the safety side of things. Whenever one of these crashes takes place, the driver seems to be all right just about every time they happen. To watch Clint Bowyer take the steering wheel off and climb out of the car after that wreck is remarkable. Once you saw that he’s all right, watching that flip again is spectacular. It was right out of Ricky Bobby. He may not have won, but what a way to finish! How is he going to top that? (Let’s not find out).

After all the cheating and the scandals, the post-race stories should be focused on the race, given all the story lines that happened. That’s good news for NASCAR, having suffered one of their biggest scandals in years. But, like a commentator said (I forget who), NASCAR is all about headlines and it doesn’t matter how they get it, if there are NASCAR headlines, then it’s good for the series. And boy, in the last couple of weeks we’ve had our fix.

It was neat watching the Toyota NASCAR team prior to the race. I don’t know if you saw it, but it was basically a paid –advertisement for the Toyotas in the field. And it was very up to date, cheating scandal and all. Tough to see A.J. not making the grid. If you consider that 4 of the 8 Toyotas made it, that’s not bad, even though 2 of them were guaranteed spots. We probably over-hype the arrival of a ‘foreign’ manufacturer in the sport. It’s not that big of a deal. Fans won’t care if Jarrett or Waltrip win in a Toyota or an American made manufacturer. Both of those drivers have their fan base and they will be happy, nobody what they are driving. That’s just my opinion, of course. I liked during the pre-race show how they tried to justify Toyota being there by stating that they are the only car out of the 4 that is actually made in America. The others are made in Canada and Mexico. Interesting point I thought.

I’ll say this, with that Toyota special and with Juan Pablo Montoya in the race, I don’t think I have watched a NASCAR broadcast which mentioned open-wheel racing more. It was kind of fun to hear Champ Car and CART being mentioned.

It’ll be interesting to see next week, when they get rid of those restrictor plates.