Emotions unravel at Daytona

Brian Vickers is upset with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who says he didn't wreck Vickers on purpose. Elliott Sadler left Daytona absolutely crushed he lost the Daytona 500 and Matt Kenseth, who shows little emotion, almost cried. While Sunday's race won't go down as one of the greatest, it still had its memorable moments.

# Junior vs. Vickers.

They were racing to get on the lead lap when they started a 10-car crash that took out Kyle Busch and eliminated Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards and Jamie McMurray from having any chance of winning. Earnhardt went low, Vickers blocked. Junior nearly ran into the grass and then came up and hit Vickers, starting the incident.

Here's some of what was said:

VICKERS: "I beat him to the yellow line and then he just turned us. When he came back up,  he just hooked me in the left rear and typically NASCAR penalizes (that). I guess they're not going to penalize him for it. It's kind of sad. To wreck somebody intentionally like that in front of the entire field is really kind of dangerous.

Said DALE JR: "It was accidental. I didn't want to wreck the field. I mean, he drove me down almost in the grass. I was trying to get back up the race track.''

While NASCAR penalized Jason Leffler five laps for aggressive driving for a similar type of incident in the Nationwide race, I can see how NASCAR might have ruled not to penalize Earnhardt. It's harder to tell if this is intentional because when you watch the tape, see how close Dale Jr.'s car gets to the grass (while running 190 mph). He's trying to get up the track as quick as he can. You can see the front end of his car shake as he runs close to the grass and starts to turn up. It seems more like trying to keep from getting into the grass. 

That said this certainly was aggressive driving by both. Of course, I saw a good bit of aggressive driving with guys cutting off each other in the pack at times. If you penalize this, how do you determine when you don't penalize someone for aggressive driving? Upon watching tape, this just didn't seem blatant. Of course, Brian Vickers would disagree with me and, likely, others would.

# Elliott Sadler was just crestfallen he lost the Daytona 500 and finished 5th. He admits if someone would have said he would finish 5th going into the race, he would take it. He had a rough offseason where he nearly lost his job and only kept it after his lawyer threatened a lawsuit. It's obivious that Sadler needs to perform this year or he'll get run out at Richard Petty Motorsports. while 5th is great, a Daytona 500 win would have been better and since he was leading until just before the rain fell, it made it even tougher on Sadler:

"To be half a lap short from being the champion of the Daytona 500 is very emotional to me,'' he said. "Just made one mistake off turn four. I didn't drag the brake enough (and prevent Kenseth from sucking up to Sadler's car and building momentum to motor by in turn 1). Really wanted to go to Victory Lane with my guys. I needed this after the offseason that I've had.''

Sadler likely will have his day. His fifth-place finish was his 6th consecutive top-11 finish in the Daytona 500. He's one of the better drivers out there to have never won the 500.

# Matt Kenseth actually showed some emotion. Did you see his face on TV after he climbed from his car and hear his quivering voice? It was just a day before the race that Kenseth _ frustrated by his struggles during Speedweeks and a 36-race winless streak _ confideded in his wife about his despair of not contending for wins anymore. And look at what happened. He admits the Junior-Vickers incident helped since it eliminated Kyle Busch, who led a race-high 88 laps. Kenseth also said he was behind Busch and in front of Carl Edwards (also collected) yet somehow didn't get collected. He doesn't know how that happpened.

A FEW OTHER THINGS

# Have heard from some fans frustrated that NASCAR called the race so quickly. It eventually stopped raining for a spell but then rained again. It takes about 2 hours or so to dry the track. While it stopped raining later in the evening, had NASCAR attempted to finish the race, it likely would not have restarted until after 10:30 p.m. Eastern time (I might be off on this time, I'm generalizing here). If so, the remaining 48 laps likely would have taken 45 minutes or longer (they would have been wrecking a few times) and the race probably would have ended closer to midnight than anything. For a sport, that's the way you do it. You go to the end. Since this is a business, you have to consider what Fox wants to do -- would it have been willing to stay on the air possibly that late? If so, you still have to consider if you want to wait it out knowing it could rain for hours and the wait would be a waste. These calls are never easy. the purist says you wait. The realist says the call was probably the best one.

# Great run for Richard Petty Motorsports with AJ Allmendinger 3rd, Elliott Sadler 5th and Reed Sorenson 9th (Kasey Kahne was 29th). Let's see how well this organization follows that the next few weeks. Same thought for Stewart-Haas Racing. That Tony got an 8th was important for a team that had no luck much of this week with Ryan Newman losing an engine and two cars and Stewart losing a car. That's a lot to recover from. Let's see how this team handles it.

# Did you notice Richard Childress Racing had two cars in the top four? Kevin Harvick was 2nd. Clint Bowyer was fourth.

# Michael Waltrip pulled out a 7th-place finish. Maybe there's hope for him.

# Matt Kenseth earned $1.5 million. Travis Kvapil, who finished 42nd, earned the least at $263,963. Tommy Baldwin Racing, which had relied manily on voluntters to prepare Scott Riggs' car got $273,513 for his 25th-place finish. Jeremy Mayfield, who started his team three weeks ago or so, finished 40th and earned $265,238.

# Did you notice David Ragan finished 6th? That's two top-six finishes in three Daytona 500 starts.

# Tough start for Joey Logano finsihing 43rd. Can already hear the "Burnt Toast'' catcalls about him. Let's see what he does in the upcoming weeks. He should be better on the 1.5 and 2-mile tracks. He just seemed out of his league at Datyona with such limited plate experience.

That will do from now. If you agree or disagree with anything, let me know. Also, you can follow me on twitter throughout the season. Just look for dustinlong.

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