Daytona 500 2012: The Most Compelling Storyline for the Big Race

Imagine if the New England Patriots and New York Giants played Super Bowl XLVI without a season's worth of drama and intrigue leading up to the big game.

The Giants would not be a team facing elimination midway through the season, nor would the Patriots be forced to play with an obviously injured player, Rob Gronkowski, who had been a major feature in  their offense throughout the entire season.

Though NASCAR drivers, aside from Brad Keselowski, rarely deal with ankle injuries, they do head into the Super Bowl of NASCAR, the Daytona 500, with much of the same media onslaught to which NFL players are subjected as a matter of course.

There is a ton of media attention and endless questions, but all of the questions must be either directed at what happened last season or what the driver expects to happen in the future.

Every driver has a tabula rasa—a bank slate—to begin the season again anew. 2011 champion Tony Stewart is on equal ground with drivers that may have never even won a single Sprint Cup race.

Last year's Daytona 500 started exactly like that, but by the end of the day every avid racing fan in the United States knew who Trevor Bayne was.

That is the magic of the Daytona 500. Realistically, in terms of points, it is no different than any of the 36 races over the course of the season. However, the winner does get a ring much like NFL Super Bowl champions.

The idea here is that nothing is truly compelling about the Daytona 500 until it actually happens.

All the talk and analysis that preceded 2011's race went down the toilet as soon as Trevor Bayne took advantage of a late mistake by David Ragan to win the race on the day after his 20th birthday.

That was the compelling story of the 2011 Daytona 500. The moment it happened, all else was essentially forgotten.

The compelling drama of Daytona is that it unfolds before your eyes, and is merely a prelude to Act I of the entire season.

Make no mistake, there are things to watch for: Tandem drafting will not look exactly like it did.

NASCAR has taken great pains to end the practice by drivers that absolutely increases speed, yet does not resemble solid, competitive racing.

Unfortunately, the practice will continue, if only in a more truncated version of its former self.

It's truly not very interesting to speculate whether an individual driver will win. Can Danica Patrick do it? Can Dale Earnhardt Jr. finally get a win? These questions about individuals are uninteresting and can usually be answered well before the race's finale.

The most interesting and magical part of the Daytona 500 is that you get to see 43 drivers filling out their individual tabula rasa as the laps count down. One will ride into NASCAR history, but how he or she does that is the exciting part.

The stories leading up to the Daytona 500 wither away when the green flag flies.

What happens after that, until the checkered flag drops, is the compelling storyline.