T-Minus 1 Hour Until the Daytona 500!
Surprise, surprise! Speed Addict is late again! I’ll admit, this was partly by design, what with being an evening late with the last pre-500 column. I discovered on Saturday evening that I would feel…a little incomplete without having something up on Sunday morning. So around 5:30, I decided to can the work for the night, and planned on posting that 1st Gatorade Duel last night to tide you knuckleheads over. Come to find out, I forgot to actually tape the damn race while I was out, instead taping MacGuyver on Spike. D’oh! Never fear, my little pretties, because my good friend Jamaica just so happened to tape the event for me, so the full recap will be up tonight along with the Daytona 500 recap. Unless an asteroid the size of Texas lands in North Carolina in the next twenty-four hours, look for both recaps up later tonight.
Before we get into all the last minute news bits from Daytona over the past week, I have a few loose ends to tie up from around the sports world and beyond that have really been bothering me lately…
Damn Hockey… Okay, okay, I’ll chalk this one up to my being as big of a redneck as can be. I was lulled into believing that hockey would somehow miraculously return from the dead on Saturday, and play a two game schedule before heading into the playoffs. Silly redneck! Boy, were we taken for a ride yesterday? And in ‘we’, I mean the population of Canada and the four others of you that care about the game in the United States. There was a time when I was a mighty big hockey fan (nothing like the days of Mario Lemiuex, Eric Lindross and the Great One to get the juices going again), and I even got the pleasure of seeing my lowly Carolina Hurricanes, the former Hartford Whalers (?) for you diehards out there, make it to the Stanley Cup Finals several years ago. Hell, they even won a game against Detroit! But after that, I was met only with disappointment with how things have gone down. Last year, there was one last glimmer of hope when Jarome Iginla and the Calgary Flames nearly won the Cup from Tampa Bay. Of course, everything went to Hell, St. Louis and Andreychuk’s Lightning won the whole deal, and Hockey got cancelled thereafter. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to really get into hockey like I was years ago, and right now, I really don’t know if I will care when they come back. Oh, well… at least I still have the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox!
Thoughts on NBA All-Star Saturday – I was quite pleased to see my Suns pull off the near-sweep of festivities last night. For those of you who are unaware, I was a brazen Phoenix Suns fan well into the Bulls run of dominance, and when I read about my favorite player, Steve Nash joining the team this past summer, I was on the verge of exploding right out of my chair. So it should come as no surprise that I was marking out like a Chris Benoit fan on the internet when Nash not only stuck it to Tot-Man Boynkins and the rest of the field, but one-upped himself to infinity with his tandem dunk with Amare Stoudamire in last night’s Slam Dunk contest, which I have taken the liberty to name “Soccerpalooza Special”. If you missed it, Amare tossed the ball off the backboard from behind the 3-point arch in such a way where it came off of the glass traveling ten feet away to an awaiting Steve Nash, who used his soccer skills to literally strike the ball with his head (think head butting it if you’re a wrestling fan) back to Amare, who catches the ball in air and throws it down. Not bad, not too bad at all.
* I’ll save comment on the Oscar hoopla until next weekend, when we will conveniently be gearing up for California anyhow.
Thoughts on the Florida Dodge Dealers 250
I only caught bits and pieces of the Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday night, but what I saw was nothing short of amazing. If you’re life long dream is to see a bunch of trucks crashing every which way, then you need to hunt this race down, STAT. The finish was even closer than the Gatorade Duel on Thursday, where Michael Waltrip edged Junior by the length of his quarter panel. NASCAR had to use videotape to determine that Bobby Hamilton had beaten cult favorite Jimmy Spencer by mere inches, after Hamilton had taken the lead just laps before.
For Hamilton, who is the defending series champion in Craftsman Truck, the victory is especially memorable due to the fact that no other driver in series history has won a race after starting dead last. For Spencer, it must have sucked tremendously to push your car OUT of Victory Lane, thinking you had won just moments before.
In all actuality, the event will be remembered as much for its incredible finish as it will be for the crazy-ass wrecks. There were several of note, including a major crash halfway through the race, which actually took out pole sitter and former 500 hopeful Kerry Earnhardt. Even more intense was a crash with only laps to go that involved Dennis Setzer bumping Chad Chaffin, causing him to take an impressive roll down the Superstretch (backstretch). Another notable wreck involved Mike Skinner and Brendan Gaughan, which prompted heated words from Skinner after the fact. Rick Crawford also took a nasty tumble during the race.
It’s interesting to point out that the Craftsman Truck Series is probably more exciting to watch than the Busch Series is, yet the CTS still doesn’t get the kind of coverage that it deserves. You can only see the series on Speed Channel, if at all. Therefore, I will attempt to make it my duty to plug the Craftsman Truck Series as much as I can in the coming months, if only to increase awareness about NASCAR’s best kept secret. [Credit: NASCAR.com]
Hershey’s TAKE 5 300
Ah, speaking of the NASCAR Busch Series, we had quite a diaper dandy on Saturday, featuring an awesome stretch of twenty laps of three-wide racing at the end… followed by a shit-ass ending if there ever was one. The controversy in my eyes really stems from throwing the caution flag on the WHITE FLAG LAP, thus eliminating any chance of having an exciting race to the finish. Tony Stewart deserved to win the race, don’t get me wrong, but I am just not a big fan of the frozen field rule after a caution flag, in regards to throwing a caution flag within ten laps of the finish.
Anyways, Stewart had quite an afternoon, having been forced into the infield grass going close to 190 MPH by Carl Edwards. Stewart literally took a short cut as a result, somehow managing to merge back onto the track in front of traffic without causing a massive wreck. As the laps wound down, Stewart managed to find enough drafting help from car owner (and controversial figure this year in Daytona) Kevin Harvick to pass the Chance 2 duo of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. Stewart had already taken the white flag when the caution flag flew, thus negating the use of the Green/White/Checker finish, and in essence giving him the win.
This race, unlike the Craftsman Truck Series event on Friday, served not only as a preview of the 500, but as a reminder to what we’ve been saying for the past two weeks. Chevrolet is on one Hell of a role this year, having now won both Gatorade Duels, the Budweiser Shootout, and now the Hersey’s TAKE 5 300. Only Bobby Hamilton drove a make other than a Chevy to Victory Lane so far. Not only that, but Chevrolets have been fasted in testing for months now, and the Top Five in yesterday’s Busch race were Chevrolets. The only two drivers that seem to have any realistic chance without driving Chevrolets are Dale Jarrett (the pole sitter and three-time winner of the event) and defending NASCAR Nextel Cup Champion Kurt Busch. Both Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin crashed their primary cars in the 2nd Gatorade Duel on Thursday, and both have expressed concerns about not being able to compete on Sunday with their backups. Some doubts linger over Jimmie Johnson’s car as well. Though there appeared to be no cosmetic damage to the #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, it will be interesting to see if anything goes wrong today. [Credit: NASCAR.com]
What to Look For in the Daytona 500
There’s a couple of minor points that should be mentioned today, since they’ve been covered in the past. Most of them revolve around the old “Who’s Hot/Who’s Not?” issue, which we’ll hit in a moment. But for a little bit, I want to make sure that everyone is properly prepared for the race. You need either a large cheese and pepperoni pizza from Dominos, two 3-liter Coca-Colas, a carton of butter pecan ice cream; or General Tso’s Chicken, House fried rice, Egg Drop Soup, Sesame Chicken, and the largest plate of buffalo wings known to man. Or, you can mix and match ala Super Bowl Sunday. Fried fish and shrimp cocktail is always a good bet, and make sure that you have plenty of chips and dip. And, always remember, if you have a home entertainment system w/ surround sound speakers, make sure you have them on arena-sound setting.
Now then, for the final damn time (since we’ve only done this, let’s see, EVERY column this month), let’s take a look at the drivers who have the best chance to win today.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Junior has not been as dominating in Daytona this year as he has been in past years. That’s not to say that Dale hasn’t had decent runs during Speed Weeks; he came within an eyelash of winning his Gatorade Duel, and nearly held onto for the victory in yesterday’s Busch series race. A lot of beat writers (myself included) wrote off DEI when they failed to impress in the Shootout and then in Qualifying. Michael Waltrip then got the DEI party started by winning the 1st Gatorade Duel by edging his teammate Dale Jr. at the line, followed by Martin Truex Jr. racing into the 500 in the second race. Dale’s favorite drafting partner, Tony Stewart has been running well this year in Daytona too, so if he can get hooked up with Tony the Tiger or Mikey, Junior is more than capable of winning this race again.
Chance to Win: Good
Michael Waltrip
After a shitty 2004 run, Michael Waltrip is back in fine form (and with a new crew chief), and pretty much shocked everyone by actually making the pass on Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win the Gatorade Duel. He followed that up by turning in a decent performance during the Busch race yesterday as well. If he can avoid taking the Daytona roll this year, Michael Waltrip should be a favorite to win the whole thing.
Chance to Win: Great
Jimmie Johnson
Jimmie Johnson was my pick to win the Daytona 500 a week ago… and I would still take Johnson over most everyone else in the field, but a couple of things happened during the course of the week. For one, Dale Earnhardt Inc. finally arrived in Daytona, and all three drivers (Waltrip/Truex/Junior) have been running incredibly well over the past four days. Plus, I can’t shake the idea that Johnson may have done some internal damage to the car, which may affect how it runs today. We shall see…
Chance to Win: Odds-on Favorite
Tony Stewart
Tony the Tiger is on a roll. After taking the 2nd Gatorade Duel in impressive fashion, Stewart then came back to win the Busch series race yesterday in impressive fashion, no two ways about it. The only thing working against Tony is his history in the 500. Aside from a second place finish last year, Stewart has had trouble finishing the Daytona 500 in past years. Everyone should remember his 2002 outing, where Stewart blew up after only completing one lap. Still, Stewart is riding high this week, and he will likely factor into the finish one way or another.
Chance to Win: Great
Ryan Newman
Newman has largely been quiet so far during Speed Weeks, and I don’t think that will change much today. Newman just doesn’t have good luck here at Daytona. The guy wrecks here more than he finishes.
Chance to Win: Not Great
Jeff Gordon
Gordon has been getting a lot of coverage this week due to his possible hints at retirement. I don’t know exactly where all that came up from, but one thing is for sure: Jeff Gordon can still race, baby. He’s got the goods on the track to compete. Even if he hasn’t dominated this year, Jeff has an incredible knack for competing at Daytona. Let’s not forget that Gordon won the last points race in Daytona (the Pepsi 400), and he is a two-time Daytona 500 winner. Hendrick may indeed send a driver to victory lane today, but it may very well be this guy.
Chance to Win: Pretty Good
Kevin Harvick
Ah, Kurt Busch is loving this. Harvick has been at the center of controversy stemming from his rather perplexing decision to bump draft in the middle of Turn 2 on Thursday, costing several drivers a chance to really compete on Sunday. With a couple of his new-found enemies starting in the back of the pack with him today, I wonder how he will fare…
Chance to Win: Not Good (at all)
Kurt Busch
The penis showed up this week. The penis did stuff. That is all.
Chance to Win: Like I even care anymore…
Rusty Wallace
Remember how I was talking about new-found enemies with Harvick? This is one of them, although Mark Martin and Jimmie Johnson are/were much more pissed than Wallace appeared to be. Still, this should be Wallace’s last time out in the Daytona 500, and it’s a shame that he’ll be starting in the back of the pack with a backup car. Okay, not really, but still, you gotta feel a little badly for the guy. Okay, not really.
Chance to Win: The same as a Snowball in Hell’s surviving.
Mark Martin
Now I do feel bad for Mark, who will also be driving his backup car today. This is definitely the last go round for Mark, who said in an interview earlier this week that not winning the 500 wouldn’t effect his perspective on his career. Of course, he looked like he’d just been shot in the groin when talking to the interviewers in the garage after Kevin Harvick crashed everyone. I hope to God that Martin can pull this one out, but I’m not holding my breath (especially for no four hours).
Chance to Win: Don’t get your hopes up.
Martin Truex Jr.
Martin Truex Jr. has about as much chance of winning the Daytona 500 as I do. Then again, Truex has as good a shot as anyone if the Big One returns from the grave. I’m not knocking Truex in the least; he’s a damn good driver, and will be one Hell of a Nextel Cup driver in the future. It’s just awful hard to win this race in your first try. Daytona is not kind to rookies very often.
Chance to Win: An Underdog/Upset Pick only.
Dale Jarrett
This is more interesting than most people are making it out to be. Jarrett has taken the pole for today’s race… but when he last won this race in 2000, he won it… from the pole position. Can we see a repeat of his 2000 performance? Not likely, but I wouldn’t put it past the UPS Ford crew to break the Chevrolet Love-In at Daytona with a strong performance.
Chance to Win: Not Terrible, Not particularly good though.
Victory Lane
No pimps this week, since I [A: Haven’t been paying attention to anyone else this week at the Pulse and B: Am out of time for this bad boy]. Again, check back with Inside Pulse throughout the evening for the latest coverage from Daytona. But, before we part ways one last time, allow me to present to you a special little piece that I wrote up earlier today. Think of it as the official Coup de Grace on Speed Weeks coverage…
WARNING: SENTIMENTAL GARBAGE FOLLOWS!
The Daytona 500: The Great American Race
A couple of months ago, my favorite baseball team won their first World Series in 86 years. For years, I can remember watching the Red Sox make the playoffs, only to lose out in the very end. When I didn’t have MLB Extra Innings or NESN, I would wait on my porch for the newspaper to arrive, just to check out the box scores. In 2003, I literally prayed out loud from the 8th inning on in Game 7 of the League Championship Series, only to have my heart stomped on by Aaron “F’n” Boone. I remember going into the living room to break the news to my father, another die-hard Sox fan who couldn’t bring himself to watch. He did his best to encourage me, saying “Wait until next year! They’ll be back, alright.” I could see the anguish in his expression, and it hurt me for a long time. But, somehow… for whatever reason… we actually had a reason to believe in next year, because next year finally became this year. We watched every step of the way as the Red Sox systematically marched their way back from the dead to beat the Yankees. We sat in our living room after Mientkiewicz caught Pokey Reese’s lob from second to end the series and cheered. Then we spent the next twenty minutes or so shooting the middle finger to every Yankee that was shown on TV, twice to A-Rod for being so prickish (did you doubt that we were Rednecks for a moment there?)
Getting to enjoy something that you and your father have been waiting for so long to have is a special feeling. Just the knowledge that your dad got to share something that he’s been waiting for nearly 48 years for with you is something that I hope everyone gets to experience. But it wasn’t the first time something like this happened to me. Far from it, actually.
Long before the Sox finally won the Series, I was glued to my television set every Sunday afternoon, watching NASCAR. I have fond memories of watching guys like Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte bouncing off each other like pinballs in Bristol, and Krusty Wall-Ass flipping down the backstretch at Daytona. NASCAR is a very interesting sport, because your favorite driver, depending on who that may be, is most likely NOT to win on a given Sunday (or Saturday night as the case may be). By 1997, I had come to the realization that my all-time favorite, Darrell Waltrip would never win another race, and it hurt like Hell for a long, long time. I almost had that same feeling with Dale Earnhardt until he won Talladega a year before he died, and I’m thankful that I got to see his final victory.
I told you all that to tell you this. Shortly before Darrell Waltrip won his last race in 1992, I had come to discover a big ole boy from Kentucky who, while having not won his first race yet, was conveniently related to Darrell, that being his brother Michael Waltrip. Michael was an interesting case-study, because he was one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. He’s just a good guy by nature, and is opposite of Darrell in most ways on the track. By 1997, Mikey was essentially becoming a one-man version of the Boston Red Sox for me. He won the Winston once, and I got to see him and Darrell at the Speed Week parade in Uptown Charlotte once, but he could never quite make it to the finish line first on Sunday. I remember tuning into the 500 in 1999, scanning the position indicator on the top of the screen, only to find both Darrell and Michael were running back in 34th and 35th place. I was starting to lose faith in the aging Michael Waltrip, who would seemingly never catch a lucky break. I thought it was all over for him.
I was dead wrong.
Hope was partially restored during the winter of 2001, when Dale Earnhardt Inc. had signed Waltrip on to their team, which is always encouraging. Darrell had since retired from racing, and Michael was easily my favorite driver by this point, which had me stoked for the Daytona 500. The Patriots won their first Super Bowl a week earlier, which was an added bonus.
The race was a good one, no doubt about it. I can remember watching the Earnhardts, Gordon, Waltrip and Jarrett swap the lead quite a few times that day. But with ten laps to go, and Michael leading a race this late for the first time in his life, I was getting excited. Every passing lap, Earnhardt Jr. would go low to try and pass, and Michael would move down to block. With each lap, I was sure that Junior would get under Waltrip just enough to either pass him, or put him in the wall. But as Michael took the white flag, I was finally starting to understand that Waltrip had a real chance at winning this thing. Then something interesting happened; I couldn’t help but notice how Dale Earnhardt was staying put right in the middle of the track, not so much trying to find a good groove to get up in the front as much as he was blocking Schrader and Marlin from passing him. By the time the field had entered Turn 3, it finally struck me: Earnhardt was blocking for Michael and Dale Jr. It was at that moment that Earnhardt, while blocking for his son and his friend, had his bumper clipped. Dale’s momentum carried him into the outside retaining wall, and his car finally came to rest in the grass near the pit road entrance. I never saw it, because my eyes were planted on the #15 NAPA Chevrolet coming down into the Tri-Oval, listening to my father yell, “Junior can’t pass him!”. I can vividly remember Darrell screaming out encouragement to his brother in the telecast.
Darrell: “C’mon, man! C’mon, Mikey! You got it, buddy… you got it, you got it, you got it! Mikey!!!”
I’m not ashamed to admit that it got a little dusty in our party room that day. Everyone, from friends to family members where standing, high fiving each other, looking like we had all just hit the Lotto. Watching Michael climb out of that car in Victory Lane, thrusting his arms up into the air in triumph is a feeling that I’ll never forget, for as long as I will watch our so called “sport”. It only lasted for a split second, and then that feeling was put to rest. I had seen Michael Waltrip, a driver I had been following for nearly a decade, win the big one. Only after we saw a live shot of the ambulance rushing Dale to the hospital as the show came to a close did we understand that a more important event had taken place.
A few years have passed since then, but that brief moment of triumph for Michael is still a fond memory that I think about from time to time. Since that day, NASCAR has experienced a boom in popularity and coverage. The sport is losing its roots in the name of national expansion, and it seems like someone else makes fun of race fans every week, claiming us to be nothing more than rednecks wasting good money to watch guys take left turns. I sat down and thought about it for a while once, and came to the realization that being a NASCAR fan is just like being a fan of any other sport. You’ll take your lumps like the rest of them, and there will come times when you start to question whether being a fan of a certain driver is a good thing (for instance, when your favorite driver drags the catch can out of his pit box with him, costing him the race). But in the end, it isn’t all that dissimilar from being a football or baseball fan. Each time out, you hope that your guy wins it all, just like you hope for your favorite team to outlast the others when it really matters. NASCAR isn’t about watching guys take left turns all day. It’s about smelling the burning grease on a cold October day in Carolina. It’s about making a connection to a driver that you’ll probably never have the chance to meet in person, yet you would still root for him until the end of your days. It’s about cheering along with 150,000 other maniacs at the track, slapping hands with total strangers when your guy passes another. NASCAR is hardly about a bunch of rednecks on a Sunday afternoon; it’s about a group of friends watching a race at Michigan or Watkins Glen while downing pizza and wings. You show up at a track early Sunday morning, walking around the parking lots, going from one driver’s merchandise trailer to another. You see people grilling with total strangers, moving around from one gathering to another, linked only by the hats on their head, or the driver’s shirt that they’re wearing. It’s about romanticism. It’s about the thrill of the Big One. It’s about a father and a son watching the Daytona 500 together, rooting for their favorite driver to win one last time.
NASCAR may never be a true sport. Even then, there will always be those who criticize it, or laugh at the notion of it being alongside the NFL or NBA. It may never completely shed its Southern heritage, or it may not even be associated with the South when all is said and done. But no matter where we go from here, there is one thing that no one can take away from us: our love for racing. It’s one of the few truths that we have to hold on to.
Enjoy the 500, guys. I’ll catch you on the flip side.
