Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

Whew, what a finish. Who would have thought that Dodge would have 6 out of the first 8 finishers. Perhaps they were sandbagging after all.

None-the-less, after an uneventful begging, the 50th Daytona 500 turned out to be a real crowd pleaser. At first it looked like the race would be caution free but once the track cooled down a bit and the closer to the finish the excitement started.

The most exciting driver out there to watch was Kyle Busch; he was all over that track. He could literally put his car anywhere at will, and did so. I honestly thought he and Tony were going to be the cars to beat but the teamwork of Newman and the other Busch proved to be strong. Tony went everywhere with Kyle and jumped at the opportunity to win the race with two laps left and held the lead briefly but he didn’t have a drafting partner as Kyle couldn’t stay with Tony and the Penske team cars chewed Tony up and spit him out on their way to a 1,2 finish.

It is hard to believe that with all his racing experience that this is Penske’s first restictorplate win, let alone his first Daytona 500 victory. This win also ends a two year winless streak for Ryan Newman. Congratulations to Penske, Newman, and the rest of the organization for this victory.

Another interesting development was the demise of the Hendrick team. Three of their four cars experienced problems late in the race. Jeff had suspension problems, something they noticed before in testing/practice and thought they had fixed, while both Jimmie and Casey were involved in accidents on the track. All of these problems left Dale Jr with no drafting partner and a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the race. Dale eventually finished a respectable 9th, but he still had his problems too.

During one of the late caution periods his crew Chief wanted him to come down pit road to get a fresh set of tires and maybe a splash of gas as they were cutting it pretty close on the fuel mileage, but Dale didn’t come off the track. Why? There was too much radio chatter between everyone else on the team that Tony Eury couldn’t get a word in edge-wise to let Dale know he had to come in to the pits.

You know, this missed opportunity to get fresh tires is an example of the same stuff that went on last year when both Eury and Earnhardt were at DEI. Dale is driving the car, he cannot manage the rest of the team while he is driving, and it is Eury’s job to do that. You can blame everything last year on the problems at DEI, but that excuse no longer works now. Eury needs to step up and take charge, and you know if he can’t do it Hendirck will, and replace Eury in the process.

Photo Credit: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images for NASCAR

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