Pot holes get us all, Even at Daytona..

We have all experienced it, the uncertain feeling you get after you plow through a pot hole on your way to work. You hope first that your tires didn't blow, or that your axle is still in one piece, or maybe you are just left with a misaligned steering column. I was pissed off to all heck when I received a nice V shaped notch in the rim of my '88 Nova. I paid $400 bucks for that car, and after one pot hole disaster the cost of operating the fickle machine almost doubled.

These are the breaks, hey shit happens right? You move on, register in your files where the hole was and swerve like hell at the last minute every time you approach said pot hole. What if your car cost you several million dollars, and you are driving on the nonpareil circuit known as Daytona International Speedway? Yeah you would be pretty ticked off about a gaping hole conveniently located on the exalted track. Not only do you now have to repair the millions of dollars worth of damage to your car, you also have not won the big one, not taking home the big purse, not kissing your wife in the winners circle, not on Letterman the following Monday. That is a whole lot harder a pill to swallow than a dented rim on a Nova.

This is the scenario that played out for 4 time defending champ Jimmy Johnson. The 48 hit the hole, lost a tire and pretty much saw their Daytona 500 dreams fall through the cracks in the pavement.

While the race itself was spectacular, the best plate racing I have seen in years, these delays were almost too much to handle. Needless to say I ran out of DVR space as the final restart was shaping up. I set the dam thing for 3 extra hours thinking I was in the clear. Did my Valentines day diligence then sat down for the race. I had avoided all media up until that point, no facebook, no internet, and no television for the entire day. While in the grocery store I even managed to avoid eye contact with a man wearing a Jeff Gordon #24 hat. But this all came to an abrupt halt on lap 206, just as the third restart flag was waiving. I missed the 88's white knuckle driving and his stampede to the front. Had I seen these laps The edge of my seat would have been worn thin.

This brings me to my next gripe, all these restarts. Like Jr. said in the post race, its like the last few minutes of an NBA game, with all the fouling, and timeouts, and posturing for the minimal chance that you could erase that 9 point deficit in 34 seconds (flashbacks of Reggie Miller in the Garden just filled my head). Had the race ended under the old rules Kevin Harvick would have won, and Jr. would have finished in the high teens. But these are the rules and we love to follow them right?

On a side note Jamie Mcmurray won the Daytona 500.

Michael Clark (emsea)