After being postponed twice, the Daytona 500 had finally started under the lights at 7pm EST. Unbelievably, after just the first lap, Jimmie Johnson gets pushed into the wall and collects 6-7 cars. One of those cars happened to be Danica's...dammit. Not her fault, or even Jimmie Johnson's. After watching the replay, I blame Elliot Sadler on that one.
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| Danica trying to dodge Jimmie Johnson's wrecked car to no avail. |
Danica then goes back out during lap 70 of the race. The Baldwin Racing and Stewart-Hass Racing teams worked feverishly in the garage to get Danica's #10 Chevy Impala back in the race. I know Danica is one "pissed-off chick" if she refused to get out of the car while the teams were working on it. It was definitely over an hour sitting in that car while everybody was scrambling around trying to fix the complete rear end of that race car. After hearing her thank the team for getting her back out there despite being down 62 laps, you can hear the disappointment in her voice since she was quite confident she would do well for this Daytona 500. It's been a pretty rough weekend for her, and even rougher "debut" in Sprint Cup. Danica eventually finished 38th overall down 64 laps.
Yes, I am Danica's biggest fan. And, yes, I was a NASCAR fan way before Danica even showed interest in stock cars. But as a longtime fan of racing, this Daytona 500 was one of the most bizarre I've ever watched. There were stretches of monotony as drivers were trying to keep their cars from overheating for the end. Then it started to get interesting halfway through since there was a $200,000 prize for the leader after lap 100. And again, monotony for 30 laps. Then word got to drivers that a storm was coming and they started getting racy again. Then the unthinkable happened...during a caution with 40 laps to go, Juan Pablo Montoya was getting back on track after pitting and all of a sudden his car loses control and slams into one of the jet dryer vehicles. A huge fire breaks out at turn 3 due to all of the jet fuel the dryer vehicle was carrying. The race was then red flagged. Fortunately, JPM and the driver of the jet dryer truck walked away.
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| Jet dryer vehicle on fire at lap 3. |
This Daytona 500 was all about "WAITING". We had to WAIT for the rain to pass to start the race. Danica had to WAIT for over an hour for her car to be repaired after only 1.5 laps. We had to WAIT for almost 2 hours for fire damage to the track to be fixed with 40 laps to go. There is even footage of Danica taking what looks to be a bathroom break, Carl Edwards greeting fans, and Brad Keselowski tweeting during this WAIT. They went back to green with 34 laps to go and Matt Kenseth held back a charging Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to finally win the 54th Daytona 500. It took a 31 hour delay and 6 hours after the start to complete this race.
BTW -- I am quite impressed with Clint Bowyer's karaoke skills.
