Crazy Daytona Weekend Recap

First off, sorry people for being absent the past few days, I had a hectic weekend of traveling and hardly had time to get to the blog.

Secondly, WHAT IN THE WORLD!?!?!?!?

All three series left us scratching our heads amazement (or confusion) with the final results. Three races with endings and twists that no one could predict or even dream of!

First off in the Truck Series, now we know who John King is! The 23 year old Tennessean snagged his first career victory in NASCAR (and only 3rd ever in anything according to him) in only his 8th Truck start. King was able to weave his way through multiple wrecks, but the third to last wreck was caused by King. He was running 2nd behind Johnny Sauter and got into Sauter's rear, spinning him out and collecting other cars. If Sauter had made it only 100 more yards, he would've taken the white flag and the race would've been over even though he wrecked. Instead though, King made it through all three possible green-white-checkers to score an improbable victory for Red Horse Racing.

Then on the Nationwide side.........

Now I wasn't able to watch the race, but I did get to see the ending and I do know that Danica crashed (yet again). James Buescher must feel like one lucky man! Riding in 11th on the last turn and the top 10 cars crash? Insane! It looked like Tony Stewart was going to use an improbable run up the outside to score his 5th win in a row at Daytona in the Nationwide Series, but Joey Logano went up to block him and all hell broke loose. Buescher zigged and zagged through the crashing cars, edged his way around Brad Keselowski and scored his first career Nationwide victory.

And then there was the 500........

So much anticipation and excitement building.......and then the monsoon came.

So then we waited until 7 p.m. on a Monday night, but it was well worth it. It only took til Lap 2 for the mayhem to start. Elliott Sadler rode Jimmie Johnson's bumper a little too close in the tri-oval and sent Johnson spinning into the outside wall. Johnson came back down the track and got hit hard by David Ragan, also collecting Kurt Busch and yes, of course, Danica Patrick. Things stayed relatively sane until Lap 81 when a strong running Jeff Gordon lost a motor out of nowhere, but was able to signal Mark Martin and Tony Stewart out of the way before it let go. Then things mellowed out again until the most bizarre thing imaginable happened. Under caution with 40 to go, Juan Pablo Montoya was trying to catch up with the pack when an apparent gear broke and sent him spinning into one of the safety cleanup trucks. The truck, carrying 200 gallons of jet fuel, was destroyed, as was Montoya's car.

 The jet fuel pouring out of the truck then ignited and stayed on fire for a good few minutes. Eventually they put it out, but it took over 2 hours to clean the track. When all was said and done though, Matt Kenseth, who had a strong car all night, held of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and teammate Greg Biffle to win his 2nd Daytona 500.

Lets just hope the weather doesn't follow us as we head to Phoenix this weekend!