Daytona Short Stuff

...yeah, it's another one of those... I should feel guilty. But I don't.

1) Mark Martin and Dale Jr make the front row for the Daytona 500, and then don't really do much in the Duels... can't blame them though, really... they didn't need to do anything at all. But really, damaging the car wasn't cool, Junior. =P Since I didn't see it, I'll have to go with the claim that it was "body" damage, and Lance and Co. will take care of it. We'll know soon enough (Sunday, if you lost track).

Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne went on to win the duels (beating out Kevin Harvick, the Bud Shootout winner, and Tony Stewart, respectively).... So, basically five of the top six starters in the 500 are Chevrolets, with a lone Petty Ford in the mix, and of the five, four are Hendrick-powered..... Hmmmm.....

2) A chick speed geek is required to be a Danica Patrick fan, right? Well, either way, I am. The ARCA race was her first real stock car test, and she came through it in one piece and won some respect. A top-10 finish may not seem that impressive, but the races at Daytona are always crazy, the ARCA one is no exception, and Danica had to pull off some major moves to keep her car intact for that run to the front.

Due to holding her own in the ARCA race, her debut in the NASCAR Nationwide Series has been stepped up to be Saturday... That race is always interesting to watch, and it'll only be more so with Danica joining a field of Sprint Cup regulars. It'll be a real test of her skills, and Tony Eury Jr's crew chief skills to make it through... but then, Tony Jr's had such cases before.

3) NASCAR's upped the number of Green-White-Checkered attempts from one to three, in an effort to finish the races under green... which is why they added the G-W-C in the first place. =P Of course, then they started wrecking under the shootout conditions it created.... Hmmmmm.... Me wonders what might happen this time... current prediction: three times the chaos. but hey, I've been wrong before.

...and that should more or less catch everyone up for a bit, or at least get you traveling over to NASCAR.com to see what I didn't mention. =P It's Daytona, there's always more side stories than laps to the race.