I like NASCAR, but I think calling yesterday's Daytona 500 for rain was lame. They clearly weren't able to finish the race last night. It takes too long to dry a track at night, without the sun. But they could have restarted it this afternoon. After all, it's a holiday. The weather in Daytona this afternoon will be sunny and in the high 60s. And people would watch on TV. What could compete with the race on a Monday afternoon?
Anyway, most of the favorites had poor finishes. Dale Earnhardt Jr. made two big mistakes in the pits. He drove right past his spot on pit lane. Later, he parked with his wheel on the line of his pit-box while his crew worked, costing him a 1 lap penalty.
Earnhardt Jr. was one of two drivers that started a major wreck on lap 124, taking out Kyle Busch, who had dominated the race until getting caught up in someone else's mess. Busch had led 88 of the 123 laps ran. Nobody else led more than 25 laps.
Matt Kenseth barely, and I mean barely got through the wreck. If you watch the replay, he's in the right lane, about 4 cars back from the start of the wreck. Brian Vickers' sideways Toyota comes within inches of scraping Kenseth's front-end, but Kenseth escaped.
Matt Kenseth led 7 laps. He just so happened to be in the lead when it started raining, so he's the winner of the Daytona 500. Again, very lame. If someone doesn't dominate, but winds up with the lead at the end of the race, that's fine. He outlasted the competition, or made his move at the right time. But winning the way Kenseth did is boring, anticlimactic, and unimpressive.
NASCAR heads to southern California for the Auto Club 500.
-The Commodore
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