Catchfence

With Speedweeks 2010 has come quite a bit of wreckage and more questions as to whether some of the sport’s most-hyped stars are capable of delivering on the publicity. And amid the hype machinery the path to victory lane hit a pothole for a lot of people – none more so than Daytona’s beleaguered track workers needing two red flags to repair the obstreperous aperture in Turn Two – while a racer lost to the hype machine has wound up living up to what others were supposed to deliver.

Certainly the hype surrounding Danica Patrick got off to as dubious a start in stock cars as it did in IRL cars; the Race-Stream Media congratulated Patrick over her sixth-place in the ARCA 200, prefering not to notice the weakness of the field in which she raced. With her ARCA debut she decided to enter the DRIVE4COPD 300 at Daytona and then the reality check got cashed – she basically made zero progress from the back of the field, lost a lap, then after getting a Lucky Dog she wrecked. True, she can’t be blamed for the wreck – as opposed to her IRL wreck in 2005 at Homestead where she charged blindly into a wreck scene – but the result did nothing to validate what little success she has enjoyed in major-league racing so far. Indeed Danica Patrick’s February resembled Peyton Manning’s – both were deified by the media and both choked under pressure against real competition in keeping with their competitive histories. Making it more damning to Danica is her continued inability to do more with more; few drivers have gotten better opportunity and done less with more than Danica Patrick.

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JR Motorsports wound up having a terrible Speedweeks other than the ARCA race – Patrick wrecked after basically not passing a single car all week, then Junior – who actually can race and has the hardware to show for it – got swept up by Carl Edwards’ imitation of Ernie Irvan on Daytona’s backstretch, and the result left more than a few wondering if there was any momentum Junior could carry into the Daytona 500, all the while leaving Tony Stewart to race to a surprisingly easy Daytona 300 win.

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But Speedweeks doesn’t say die until the 500′s flag is waved. After the Trucks went at it and the first big upset of the weekend transpired, the 500 arrived and wound up doing a good imitation of the 24 Hour race thanks to the pothole in Two that illustrates the long-overdue need to repave the speedway. It wound up aiding the competition, as the changeover to night added grip to cars looking a little out of whack handling-wise all week; it translated what had been a good race into something even better.

And the next thing we knew after over six hours of hurry up and lead combined with hurry up and wait, a team that once dominated restrictor plate racing combined with a team whose debut race came in the most infamous 500 in the last 30 years produced an upset no less stunning than the one that happened twenty years earlier. With this 500 more minds will be changed about Jamie McMurray than has happened in the last three seasons. A driver looking like a drafting bust after failing to follow up his shocking 2002 upset began to change a few minds with a terrific side-draft fight to the finish in 2007; it took another two years but he pulled off another upset at Talladega, and now we have McMurray, Teresa Earnhardt, and Chip Ganassi as one of the oddest Odd Couples to ever get the Harley Earl Trophy.

And adding more to the oddity was the driver who wound up chasing McMurray home. It was easy to write off Junior after flipping over in the Busch/Nationwide 300 because he’d produced nothing to hang his hat on all week. Of course he chased home Brad Keselowski last April and it did nothing to ignite his season, but to get this far after so bad a week leaves one wondering if there’s life in Junior’s competition career yet.

McMurray’s win came in the most competitive 500 since 1983 – the first 500 to break 50 lead changes since then and the highest number of leaders in the event’s history. Chris Economaki has long noted the difference between driving and racing – McMurray continues to illustrate that difference.

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The number of potential winners is always bantied about before a 500 but this was one where the “anyone can win” cliche actually had meat. Certainly the two Richards – Petty and Childress – had fleets as strong as anyone has ever seen this Speedweeks while the Roush fleet also led a lot, but when it raged to the finish we had something the sport can use – the validation of a team that had been a shell of its former selves entering Speedweeks and now can hold the Harley Earl Trophy.