The Biggest Takeaways from the 2015 Daytona 500
There’s something oddly refreshing about athletics that gets lost in layers upon layers of varnished cynicism. At the center of it, where it really matters and why people tune to in to the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Daytona 500, are people.
Listening to Joe Logano, once known as “Sliced Bread,” but who has now become something more artisanal than anything Hostess’ food scientists concoct, you’re struck by the rawness and the importance of winning such an event.
Logano caught up with Fox Sports after the race and said on the broadcast:
"I can’t believe it. This is absolutely amazing. This is awesome. The Daytona 500! Oh, my God! Are you kidding me? I was so nervous the whole the race, Tad [Boyd] my spotter, crew chief Todd [Gordon], all the guys on this team worked so hard in the offseason. This is our weakest racetracks, super speedways. We worked real hard and hard work gets results every time and I couldn’t be more proud. The Daytona 500! Ho!
"
It’s hard not enjoy moments like that.
All that said, the Super Bowl of NASCAR is just the first race of 36 so we’d better get to the biggest takeaways from the Great American Race.
Stewart-Haas Racing Has Its Work Cut out for Them
1 of 8
Once you look beyond the shiny veneer that was Kevin Harvick’s runner-up performance at the Daytona 500, what you see is a team in flux.
Harvick is the Jaguar hood ornament on a sputtering Hyundai Elantra.
Tony Stewart’s quest for that elusive Daytona 500 ended on Lap 41 when his No. 14 car drifted up the track and into Ryan Blaney. The wreck, minor as it looked, took Stewart out of the race for good.
"We ran as many laps as we could that would get us ... we couldn't run any more laps and gain anything," said Stewart on FoxSports.com. "It's the biggest race of the year and the last thing you want to do is stay out there and have something else happen to get in the middle of something. Let's just let those guys have their day."
That came on the coattails of Kurt Busch’s indefinite suspension for the domestic abuse investigation, in which he allegedly smashed his ex-girlfriend’s head against the wall of his motor home at Dover International Speedway in September 2014.
Danica Patrick finished a respectable 21st in the 500 and was never a threat.
This team stands on a soft foundation right now and it’s up to Stewart to come out of this and lead this team on the track and off.
The Fox Coverage Will Be Great
2 of 8
ESPN got out of the NASCAR game and that cut two of its great pieces of talent free.
Jamie Little worked the pit boxes and was right in the middle of the Jeff Gordon-Brad Keselowski scrum from 2014’s Chase race at Texas Motor Speedway. Little is as good as it gets for a sideline-type reporter.
Andy Petree, who was in the booth opposite Dale Jarrett for ESPN, acts as a rules expert for Fox similar to the NFL broadcasts summoning an ex-official to break down calls.
Add to that the already entrenched booth and pit road talent, and Fox is loaded with solid insights and personalities that make for a major-league broadcast.
The three-and-a-half hours or so that it took to run 500-plus miles didn’t feel that long, which is nice because these race can, at times, drag on.
We’ll see how they handle the Coca-Cola 600.
Hendrick Motorsports Is the Team to Beat
3 of 8
It goes without saying that Hendrick Motorsports is the biggest, baddest team on the circuit. It went out there on Sunday and it felt like it was ready to put four drivers in the top five.
HMS, topped by Jeff Gordon, who was involved in a late wreck pushing him back to 33rd, led 158 of the 203 laps, just not the one that mattered. Gordon led 87 laps of the entire race.
For a time it looked like Jimmie Johnson was the car to beat. He fended off many charges from Carl Edwards and some from Logano, but ultimately got burned on the final restarts and slipped back to fifth.
Johnson said during the Fox television broadcast:
"The last two restarts just didn’t work for us. I was ahead of one lane and the guys behind us just weren’t bumper to bumper and then on that last restart, same thing on the bottom. It was just the way things happen. So many other circumstances determine who wins these races. That’s what makes them such a crapshoot.
"
But a crapshoot whose odds are ever in your favor when you have drivers this good. Kasey Kahne finished a quiet ninth with Dale Earnhardt Jr. taking third.
No one needs to be told to watch out for HMS, but watch out for HMS.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
New Pit Road Technology Levels Playing Field
4 of 8
That first pit stall may not be quite as coveted anymore with the new digital pit road technology on pit road.
Pit crews will get flagged for jumping the wall too soon incurring drive-through penalties for their cars. Johnson and Edwards were just two who had to pull back on to pit road to serve out their “sentence.”
That first stall is tricky. Crew members can’t jump the fence until the car is one pit stall away. That first stall doesn’t have quite the same boundaries as the other 42.
“We don't have any new rules," Fox Sports analyst Darrell Waltrip said on FoxBusiness.com. "These rules have been in existence ever since we've been making pit stops. They're just being monitored, looked at and called a lot closer than they've ever been before with this new technology."
With so many moving parts, so much traffic and so much jockeying, this move to an electronic system with human overlords makes so much sense.
It’s tough on the super speedways on green-flag pit stops to go from 190 miles per hour to 55. Kyle Larson locked up his brakes real good and skidded a bit into the infield on one pit stop just to control his speed.
Technology that frees up the mistakes made my human error and to police everyone equally with the eyes in the sky makes the playing field more level.
Good Thing Joe Gibbs Racing Signed Carl Edwards
5 of 8
Joe Gibbs Racing was dealt a nasty blow when Kyle Busch broke his leg when his Xfinity Series No. 54 car smashed into an interior wall on Saturday night.
The wall Busch hit lacked the energy absorbing cushion seen on most walls around the track. As a result the collision was violent and as a result compound fractured his leg.
The offseason signing of Edwards was supposed to rival the four-car squadron of Hendrick Motorsports. With Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Edwards, this team had the star power to go bumper-to-bumper with HMS.
Now that Edwards signing takes a whole different hue. He’s no longer just the icing on the cake. He now must fill the void. Edwards told The Boston Globe:
"Matt [Kenseth] has been huge in my transition. Matt kind of does things under the radar. He put together some meetings early on and some things I needed to be very aware of and really helped me a lot. He’ll be a guy I lean on a lot. He’s a quiet guy, but he’s a very good leader and he has all the experience and success, so hopefully I can keep learning from him.
"
It’s unclear when Busch can return to full-time racing so Edwards must excel now with JGR. The pressure was always high for Edwards, but now there’s urgency to that pressure.
Casey Mears Represents the Little Guy
6 of 8
The top 10 for the Daytona 500 was filled with many familiar faces except for one: Casey Mears.
You may remember him from Thursday nights duels when his engine blew and it was unclear whether he’d even qualify for the Daytona 500. Holding his breath through the extent of the second duel, Mears exhaled when he learned he’d qualified.
"There were some nervous moments, to be sure," Mears said on MRN.com. "But then, we were born again when we got back in and suddenly, it was new life that we wanted to take advantage of on Sunday."
In a final 30 laps that saw the competitive half of the field three-wide and eight deep, Mears sat chilly in the middle of the middle.
“But if I’m in the middle,” Mears said on MRN.com, “it gives me the option to make my car do different things and makes it a little bit easier. It’s not really the safest place to be or the easiest place to be, but it definitely works well for us."
The pressure that pack of cars was under was palpable through the flat screen.
Denny Hamlin said after the race on the Fox broadcast, “These drivers have gotten so smart with the side draft. Looking at the mirror and blocking. You’re going to have that. Once it gets to three-wide nobody has an advantage because you can’t break through it.”
Mears, once long gone, secured a top 10 and is poised to maybe be one of those surprise drivers to get into the Chase this year. He’s got 25 more race to qualify for the Chase and his driving at Daytona suggests he could be in for a banner year.
Team Penske Is Scary Good
7 of 8
As scary as the four horsemen of Hendrick Motorsports are, the two-headed monster of Team Penske is equally as frightening to the competition.
Just look at Logano’s finish. He killed the final restart, the one that followed a red flag for track clean up. It was like icing a kicker.
“Everything, trying to stay relaxed,” Logano said during the Fox broadcast. “They give you the red flag and they give you the opportunity to think of everything.”
One thing he wasn’t thinking about was the untimely exit of his teammate Brad Keselowski. The No. 2 car’s engine blew out when it tracked the field in 13th place. It was the second Ford engine to bite the dust on the afternoon, which added a few more helpings of apprehension onto Logano’s plate.
Despite that, Keselowski looked like a threat at one point in this race. The 2012 Sprint Cup champ won six races last year, most on the circuit. With Logano winning the first race and securing a place in the Chase, it’s up to Keselowski to get his car to Victory Lane.
It’s only a matter of time. In NASCAR, more often than not more is more. Team Penske proves that less is more, so long as that less is more talented than most of the field.
And they are.
It's a Long Season
8 of 8
It’s a long season, so don't fret.
With so much anticipation and lead up to the Daytona 500, sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s 25 more races to qualify 15 more drivers for the Chase.
It’s easy to get fatalistic when the sport’s premier event kicks off the season. An informal polling of the drivers in NASCAR would unanimously choose a Daytona 500 over a Sprint Cup championship, but for all except Logano, that’s the goal now.
“We had a really fast car, maybe the best car here,” Earnhardt Jr. said during the Fox broadcast. “I had a lot of confidence to keep digging. I’m disappointed I let the guys down we should have won the race. It’s going to be a fun year.”
The field heads to Atlanta and the grind begins from here to September, and then September to Homestead.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
