Congrats to Matt Kenseth on winning the race after it was red flagged for rain and then called because of the weather.
Now in the past I've mentioned reasons why I'm such a big Dale Jr fan. Well, I have another one for you. Dale Jr was honest and blamed himself for the wreck today. To prove my point, here is the article from NASCAR.com.
Pit mistakes, controversial wreck damaging to Junior
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The first 55 laps of Sunday's Daytona 500 went just fine for Dale Earnhardt Jr.
But those last 97 laps of the rain-shortened event eventually won by Matt Kenseth? Um, to call them disaster-filled for Earnhardt almost doesn't do his performance the injustice it deserves.
The trouble for Earnhardt and his No. 88 Chevrolet team started long before he and Brian Vickers triggered a controversial wreck that took out several contending cars. They blamed each other, but consensus in the garage area leaned heavily toward it being mostly Earnhardt's fault.
"One guy that had problems all day on pit road made his problems our problems, and then our problems a big problem," driver Kyle Busch (*see below) said in reference to Earnhardt. Busch's No. 18 Toyota, which led a race-high 88 laps and earlier in the race seemed to be the dominant car, got caught up in the wreck caused by Earnhardt and Vickers, ending his day and relegating him to a 41st-place finish.
And it was a horrendous day for Earnhardt. Make no mistake about that.
But it didn't start out that way.
Earnhardt actually took the lead in his No. 88 Chevrolet on Lap 53, although he held it for only one lap before being passed by Tony Stewart. Three laps later, he still was running third when he headed in for what was supposed to be a routine pit stop.
That was when Earnhardt's promising day turned for the worse. Inexplicably, he couldn't find his pit stall. He drove through pit road without ever stopping, forcing him to go around the track one more time and enter the pits again before he found his stall and received the service he needed.
That dropped him from third to 36th at the time.
"If you look down this pit road, my sign's pink," Earnhardt said. "And every other sign is pink -- so it's hard to see when you're going down there [because] they're all about the same color.
"So everybody says, 'I'm going to make mine yellow' -- and two weeks later, everybody will be yellow."
Then, perhaps, Earnhardt actually shed more light on his dark day and finally was honest -- with himself, probably as much as with anyone else.
"I was under a lot of pressure, too," he added. "I was putting a lot of pressure on myself trying to get up in there and lead laps and all that. I just wasn't thinking good enough. I can't lay it on anybody but myself."
Earnhardt attempted to recover from that mishap, only to encounter another costly pit-road mistake on Lap 120, when he pitted just outside his box. Crew members already had changed his right-side tires before a NASCAR official signaled that he was outside the box, resulting in an automatic one-lap penalty.
"We had a pit stop where I was told the right-front tire was only an inch over the line," Earnhardt said. "I was held a lap for that and I don't feel like that was a fair trade. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate that rule."
That set up the biggest disaster of the day for Earnhardt. Battling with Vickers desperately to get his lap back, the two tangled coming down the backstretch on Lap 123. Earnhardt went low to attempt a pass and Vickers went low to block him, appearing to force him below the double yellow line that represents out of bounds at Daytona International Speedway.
Vickers later charged that Earnhardt apparently wrecked him intentionally to bring out a caution and insisted that it was "really kind of dangerous." Earnhardt, naturally, saw it differently -- blaming Vickers for pushing him down on the track to where he could not control his car as well as he would have liked.
Finally, there was another incident where driver Jeff Burton apparently felt that Earnhardt did not race him cleanly. Again, Earnhardt deflected the criticism and made it clear that he believes he simply was doing what he had to do.
"I was trying to get my lap back and I made it three-wide, putting him in the middle some type or another on a restart," Earnhardt said. "He got shuffled back and got in a wreck and he was upset at me for making it three-wide. [He thought] I should have worked with him and all that.
"The rain was coming, it was time to try to win the race and I was trying to get back on the lead lap. So I had to run hard."
He ran hard, all right. He even finished on the lead lap, albeit in 27th place. He also ran into some people and ran into other troubles during a Daytona 500 that he no doubt would like to forget.
*I watched the wreck on NASCAR.com and all I have to say to Shrub is this - Dude look, you will probably do that to who knows how many drivers this year, and I lost count as to how many you did it to last year. Not only have you done that, but even if you weren't have a bad day, you still did it. It's called karma pal, look it up in the dictionary.
Lastly to Junior I say this, "Look Junebug, I'll stand up for you no matter what, however, pressure or no pressure, you know the rules and had you been able to pass Brian Vickers, your pass wouldn't have counted. (I know you don't need me to remind you why) I have faith in you, as I always have and as I always will. I know you'll bounce back next week at California.
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