DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. - After the first Cup-level race at the repaved Daytona International Speedway, it's clear that when it comes to racing in 2011, nobody knows anything.
NASCAR needed a home-run shot to start the runup to a critical season, and the Budweiser Shootout delivered the equivalent of a walkoff over the foul pole: a great finish, but did winner Kurt Busch really win?
Before we get to that point, though, there's much to discuss. Start with the repaving of Daytona itself, a six-month project that marked the first new surface the iconic track has seen in three decades. As a result, drivers pushed their cars well over 200 mph in testing sessions earlier this week. And they hit upon a novel solution for how to generate high speeds: two-by-two racing, nose-to-bumper.
So as the race began, the overriding question wasn't how fast could you go, but who'll you dance with? Drivers began pairing up almost immediately, with Denny Hamlin shoving Tony Stewart to the lead over pole-sitter Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his teammate-of-the-moment Carl Edwards. (That early pairing would prove ironic later in the race.)
The two-by-two routine provided some bedfellows both strange and expected, if that's not too creepy a term to use when describing NASCAR drivers in traffic: Earnhardt and Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Joey Logano, Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick. Burton and Harvick formed the dominant team for most of the race, with Harvick shoving Burton to the lead time and time again.
But nobody stayed in the lead for very long. The race featured a Shootout-record 28 lead changes, a total that exceeded nearly half of the Daytona 500s in NASCAR history. (For reference, the Shootout is 75 laps; Daytona is 200.)
In the end, two two-car teams broke away from the rest of the pack. Denny Hamlin shoved Ryan Newman to the lead, while Jamie McMurray drove Kurt Busch. And that's how they ran for the final seven laps of the race, hooked up and motoring.
Then came the final turn of the race, and that's where everything took a turn for the controversial. It's common knowledge that the worst spot in which to run in the final turn of Daytona is the lead, because the trailing car can so easily slingshot around the leader. And that's exactly what happened Saturday night, as Hamlin dropped to the inside to sneak around Newman. When Hamlin pulled low, Newman immediately began slowing, having lost the 11 car's drive. That allowed Busch to take the high line and work around Newman.
So Newman was toast, but what about Hamlin? Last year's runner-up dropped lower, lower, lower and finally apparently crossed the double-yellow line on the apron of the raceway as he advanced on Newman. That's a definite rules violation, one that drivers had been warned about in the prerace drivers' meeting.
But did Hamlin cross the double-yellow? The initial scoring data showed Hamlin defeating Busch by 0.003 seconds. NASCAR didn't wait long to drop the hammer, though, black-flagging Hamlin and sending him to the tail end of the lead lap, positionally speaking.
"I just made a mistake," Hamlin said. "That yellow line is there to protect us. I just chose to take the safer route. We used some pavement we shouldn't have." (However, on Twitter, he later wrote, "Looking back now it looks like I was already ahead before going down there.")
"What an amazing win," Busch exulted. "I have to thank my teammate [for the night, anyway] Jamie McMurray so much. He stayed with us, he stayed true. I can't thank him enough."
It was a thrilling end to an utterly perplexing race. The two-car dances appeared to confuse both drivers and fans alike, and the way that driver pairs back in the pack could close on the leaders meant you weren't out of the hunt until you were in the garage, and maybe not even then. But clearly, where you finished -- and if you could dance with someone -- had a huge impact on whether you enjoyed the race behind the wheel.
"The racing is a lot different," McMurray said. "I hope it was exciting to watch, because it's so much different than what we had before. I had a really good time tonight."
"It's not really that great having a whole bunch of groups of two, and when you can't do anything without that, it isn't really that much fun," Matt Kenseth said. "If you're the pusher, you can't see a thing, and going 207 miles an hour and pushing someone, when you can't see, it's not a lot of fun."
Certainly, fans took to Twitter and our own Yahoo! Sports chat to complain about the racing, because that's what a certain segment of NASCAR fandom does. A driver could win the race, adopt a puppy, rescue a busload of orphans, and bring a case of ice-cold beer to every fan in the nation, and a bunch would complain because it wasn't their brand. How a race that featured 200+-mph speeds, cars going three-wide and two deep, and a finish decided in the final instants could be "bad" is a mystery, but some will always find a way. It wasn't dull, that's for certain.
But many of the the drivers seemed to enjoy themselves - Hamlin chief among the excepted, of course - and the fact that more than a third of the field took a turn in the lead (with many of the rest serving as a dance partner) meant that almost everyone's favorite driver spent some time right at the front of the pack. For a NASCAR fanbase worn down by the repetitive victory parades of Jimmie Johnson, it was a welcome rotation of new faces up front.
Other notes:
• Pole-sitter and Daytona favorite son Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed out early in the race, tipped by Edwards who was himself tipped by Regan Smith. The ensuing wreck took out those three, plus Juan Pablo Montoya, Kevin Conway and Logano.
• Derrike Cope backed into the race by being a past Daytona 500 champion, and for much of the race, backing up was exactly what he was doing. The leaders lapped him by the 12th lap, and it looked like it was going to be an ugly evening. But as slow as he was, Cope was still faster than cars parked in the garage - barely - and ended up in 14th place due solely to attrition.
• Best off-track moment of the night came when Kyle Busch left the track and took the wrong turn to go to the Sprint Cup garage. He found himself literally driving through the infield, past parking lots and behind a surely-stunned tram full of Daytona fans.
All in all, exactly what NASCAR needed to start the season: fine racing, controversy, and speed, speed, speed. The season-starting Speedweeks continues Sunday with qualifying for next week's Daytona 500.
Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee and The Marbles on Facebook for constant updates from Daytona's Speedweeks.
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