Sofa Sideline – Daytona 500 – Super Bowl of Racing?

Ward Burton wins the Daytona 500!

When all when said and done, amidst a day of "business as usual"
restrictor plate racing, Ward Burton came out the winner! This is a good thing
because he’s one of those drivers that everybody seems to like, and it’s a
happy occasion when he wins. This was Burton’s fourth career victory – his
first since last September at Darlington.

Elliott Sadler drove a good race, managing to miss all the mess, and came
home in second place. And, much to everyone’s surprise, Geoffrey Bodine won
the battle of attrition and came in third. I don’t necessarily agree that
"he’s back" but anyone who left that track unscathed, and wound up
with a decent finish deserves a pat on the back. For that matter, even some who
didn’t still did okay – Gordon, Jarrett, Waltrip, Gordon all come to mind.

The controversy continues regarding who was most at fault in the
"Harvick-Gordon" incident. From my standpoint it was a little of both,
but come on Jeff, who didn’t know that Harvick would block the position. And
when I heard you say that you were worried about the "wild man" Kurt
Busch, come on again. It sure looked to me that Busch was past you and what was
going on was that you didn’t want to get off of the gas, because you would
lose the draft and get shuffled back. But there were 50 laps left! Instead, you
clip Harvick, and where did you think he was going to go at 180+ miles an hour?
And the "big one" happened as a result. Eighteen cars were involved in
the accident – Andretti, Schrader, Todd Bodine, Johnson, Kenny Wallace, Rudd,
Bobby Labonte, Benson, Mayfield, Hamilton, Nadeau, Kenseth, Earnhardt, Atwood,
Mike Wallace and Nemechek.

Race winner, Ward Burton managed to barely miss the wreck.

"I just had a moment to decide what to do" said Burton.
"Either way, it was going to be awful close. I tried to stay low and cut
the wheel hard to the left. I actually got sideways and it couldn’t have been
more than a foot or two in front of my nose when I went by."

On a restart with six laps remaining, Jeff Gordon was in the lead with
Sterling Marlin running in second place. Marlin held back trying to get the
"run on" Gordon, but at the same time bunched up traffic behind him,
causing a five-car wreck. Gordon had moved to block the pass by Marlin, but they
managed to hook bumpers causing Gordon to spin. Marlin was the race leader, but
there was damage to the right-front quarter panel with the sheet metal rubbing
on the tire. The race was red-flagged to clean up the track and also to have the
race end under green.

The best part of the whole day was watching Sterling, while stopped for the
red flag, get out of his car, to "check out" the damage to the right
front. He just happened to tug on the sheet metal to pull it away from the tire.
That’s a no-no (and like Sterling didn’t know that). But, what did he have
to lose – he would have to go in the pits anyway. He might have made it if the
race had finished under caution, but not under green.

Teams are not allowed to work on their cards under the red flag. As a result,
Marlin started at the tail end of the lead lap, along with Jeff Gordon and with
only five laps to go, neither was in a position to win.

With five laps to go, Ward Burton brought the field down to take the green,
and became the race winner.

Other notes:

Two laps into the race, Tony Stewart blew the motor on the Home Depot number
20. And with Bobby getting caught up in the big wreck, it was not a good day for
Joe Gibbs Racing. Let’s hope it’s the end of the bad luck right there!

Dale Jr. had a tough day. Just 21 laps into the race, something flew out from
underneath leader, Michael Walt rip’s car and cut the right front tire on
Earnhardt’s car. Then on lap 94, Earnhardt blew the right rear tire, sending
him careening through the grass as he also had lost his brakes. After going to
the garage to make repairs and losing several laps, Earnhardt returned to the
track, only to be caught up in the big one on lap 149.

And Robby Gordon – didn’t disappoint us……bouncing off the wall with
nine laps to go.

Okay, so someone please tell me how the new rules supposedly made the racing
better? Supposedly the drivers were more in control of the race, and if that’s
the case, then maybe we just saw some mistakes?

I do think the cars were spread out a little more, and instead of three and
four wide we only saw two wide most of the day. But the drivers also had to
spend most of their time blocking and watching what was going on behind them to
make sure they didn’t lose the draft.

I don’t know what the answer is – maybe just take the plates off and let
them run? One thing I do know, this can’t be the "super bowl of
racing."

That’s it for now.