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Sunday, February 17, 2008
Upstart steals the stars’ stage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Daytona Beach, Fla. — More than simply the golden anniversary of the Great American Race, this Daytona 500 came earmarked as the rebirth of NASCAR. For a sport that has seen TV ratings and attendance drop the past two years, what could be a bigger pick-me-up than having the most beloved driver open a season by claiming the sport’s biggest prize?
Dale Earnhardt Jr., as you’ve heard, has a new home (Hendrick Motorsports, the Yankees of NASCAR) and a new number (88) and a new car (the unsightly Mountain Dew AMP/National Guard Chevy). He had already won twice here this month — first in the Budweiser Shootout, then in a Gatorade Duel — and already the conspiracy theorists were in a full lather: No way a sluggish sport wouldn’t, ahem, do everything in its power to juice the Nielsens and give the people what they wanted.
Instead, the 200th lap of the 50th Daytona 500 sent up this hearty salutation:
Hellooooo, Newman!
A lot of drivers could have won this race. Kyle Busch seemed to have the best car but could make no push at the end. Clint Bowyer, who finished the 49th Daytona 500 by sliding across the finish line on his roof, had the lead on the 183rd lap but got nudged by Juan Pablo Montoya and wrecked again. (This time the shiny side stayed up.) Earnhardt had all the karma and, sure enough, had the lead with 20 laps to go, but he got fleeced by Bowyer and a half-dozen others on a re-start, and there and then the people’s choice stopped being the Chosen One.
“We got pretty good at the end of the race,” Earnhardt told MSN Radio, “but I made some poor choices.”
And then this 500 seemed to fall to Tony Stewart, the certifiably great driver who has unaccountably never won this race. On cue, he took the lead on the penultimate lap with a vintage move, and now you could hear NASCAR officials thinking, “Well, if it can’t be Junior, we can certainly live with Tony Stewart.”
The end in sight, the great driver got outdriven. With two turns to go, Ryan Newman got a massive push from teammate Kurt Busch on the high side and hurtled past a stunned Stewart, who would say afterward: “It’s one of my most disappointing moments in racing. … Anybody who didn’t win this race tonight is disappointed. It breaks your heart. You’re down here for 10 days trying to win this race.”
Instead he lost it to a driver held in high esteem by insiders — a goodly number of jaded writers applauded when Newman took the checkered flag, thereby violating the ironclad rule that’s there’s no cheering in the press box — if not by the masses. He’s not a glamour boy like Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson, not a bad boy like Stewart, not the Intimidator’s boy like Dale Jr. (He is, however, a Purdue graduate with a degree in vehicle structural engineering.)
Newman hadn’t won since September 2005, 81 races ago. “Probably the most awesome thing that’s ever happened to me,” he called the victory. And then he thanked his team owner, the venerable Roger Penske, finally a Daytona winner after 3-1/2 decades of trying, and he credited Kurt Busch with providing “the push from heaven.”
Stewart might be calling it something else. It was widely reported that Stewart punched Busch during Speed Weeks, and the two have had more than their share of run-ins. With another driver bearing down, would Stewart have stayed so low on the track?
“Maybe he did think twice before he jumped up high,” Busch said, “that it was me up there. Instead of worrying about who it was, he should have just gone there.”
But he didn’t. Tony Stewart, who’s known as Smoke, got smoked on the last lap. If the 50th Daytona 500 didn’t yield the coronation NASCAR might have envisioned, it nonetheless produced yet another stirring ending. Better still, it forced the conspiracy theorists to pipe down.
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