Was carnage worth it at Daytona?
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Brad Keselowski stomped through the smokefilled haze and eyed the destruction from another disastrous Daytona 500. His car had been sheared when it pinballed into the wall and then back into traffic after a go-for-broke run for the win that ended with Keselowski pacing in anger.
Keselowski took two steps and heaved his helmet at the carcass of his race car.
“My body is fine but my heart is broken,” Keselowski wrote on social media. He noted that “months of studying, months of tremendous car prep” and positioning himself to make a last-lap pass was still not enough to win his first Daytona 500.
This is NASCAR’s crown jewel event, the race that pays the most money and carries the most prestige. But after another fireball finish endangered drivers and ruined millions of dollars in race cars, it’s hard not to wonder if the carnage is worth all this effort.
It certainly was for journeyman Michael McDowell, a 100-1 underdog who slipped through the chaos for the first victory of his 13-year career. McDowell led for only a quarter of a lap at Daytona International Speedway and snapped a 357-race losing streak.
For his team, tiny Front Row Motorsports, it was just the third victory in 17 seasons.
So yes, victory validated McDowell, a well-respected racer who always may wonder what his career might have been if he’d had a shot driving top-notch equipment. But it won’t change the race-to-race fortunes for Front Row, which plods along each season knowing it can’t routinely slug it out with NASCAR’s elite.
NASCAR drivers are taught to believe the Daytona 500 is the most important race in their world, but it’s hard to find a recent scenario in which “The Great American Race” was a make or break for anyone.
The 500, of course, matters to Denny
Hamlin, who has won it three times but has never captured a Cup Series championship. But did the 500 do much for Trevor Bayne? He was the last driver to pull off an upset, back in 2011, and he ran just three full Cup seasons after the Daytona 500 win.
Bayne now owns and operates a pair of coffee shops in Tennessee; he ran eight Truck Series races last season.
Tony Stewart never won a Daytona 500 yet still ended his career a threetime Cup champion and first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee. Richard Childress Racing didn’t become an overnight powerhouse after Austin Dillon’s win in 2018, and Ward Burton had just two more full seasons following his 2002 victory.
So much time and energy dedicated
to one single event – it is just one race out of 36 each year! The racing is completely different at almost every other track on the schedule! – and so little to show at the end.
NASCAR made it only 14 laps into the 63rd running of the race before early aggression wiped out 16 cars. The rain started minutes later and anyone who waited through a nearly six-hour delay was rewarded with mostly follow-theleader racing until the early Monday finish.
Superspeedway strategy is one of survival. The goal is simply to be running still on the final lap, when everyone shows their cards and makes a play for the win.
Keselowski leapfrogged from 14th place to second over the closing 25 laps, then readied himself for the winning move. He stalked teammate Joey Logano down the backstretch and with a huge push from McDowell – his peers agree that McDowell was the strongest pusher at Daytona – Keselowski ducked underneath Logano while pulling all of McDowell’s momentum with him.
Logano threw a block – some argue the defensive move was too late – and it wrecked both Team Penske cars. McDowell was able to charge through the crash scene, but eight other drivers could not.
The Daytona 500 then ended under caution because of a 10-car pileup.
Only 11 of the 40 cars made it across the finish line, yet the crowd still roared following a spectacular finish. It didn’t seem to matter that drivers admitted they weren’t truly racing for 400-plus miles.
“It’s hard to be that guy to stick your neck out,” Dillon said.
Cup champion Chase Elliott added: “Everybody was content to ride around the top until the very last second, and that’s what you saw.”
Wrecks aren’t required to ensure an entertaining race, but they are very much inevitable at superspeedways. It has made multi-car accidents expected, maybe even embraced since the imagery almost always finds its way into promotional material.
There’s a bloodthirst for this kind of racing that can’t really be denied because if demolition derbies weren’t accepted, something would change. Be it the rules or the engine packages or even the mentality of the actual drivers, something would be adjusted if this wasn’t status quo.
This Daytona 500 wasn’t all that different from last year’s, when Ryan Newman in yet another last-lap frenzy launched into a death-defying tumble down the track. He wasn’t seriously injured, nor was anyone this time, and that seems to be the new benchmark for grading Daytona.
Entertaining? Sure. And those clips might even make some highlight shows.
But that wasn’t good racing. It was instead a waste of time.
Coach Abner Calderon never tried to get his soccer players’ hopes up, after the Phoenix Union High School District did not allow winter sports practice to begin for its 10 schools and delayed a decision on whether to have a winter sports season.
Gauging from what happened in the district with the fall sports because of the pandemic, he knew what would inevitably happen for the winter season and the impact it would have on his Carl Hayden boy’s soccer team, the defending 5A champions.
The PXU late last week finally put an end to any hope that schools would join the Arizona Interscholastic Association winter sports season, deciding not to participate. Instead, it will push things into March and April, allowing schools to compete against each other in soccer and basketball.
The AIA moved ahead with a winter season after a delay, requiring masks be worn by all competitors and limiting fan attendance. But school districts have the final say on whether to let their schools participate.
The AIA winter sports season will be over in early March, along with its championship games. Carl Hayden won’t be able to compete, after the district decided COVID-19 metrics were still too bad in the PXU area to allow competition.
In addition, in March and April, when district schools can compete against each other, many of Carl Hayden’s top players will be playing with club teams and competing in those tournaments.
“Now, knowing we’re not going to have a season, it’s tough,” said senior forward Edwin Yepiz, who was part of a strong nucleus of players returning to defend their state title.
Yepiz made The Arizona Republic’s All-Arizona soccer team last year as one of the eight players. He figured he could be the leader this year, and take the Falcons on another AIA state title run.
“Colleges were looking forward to the high school season to see me play,” Yepiz said. “At that time (March and April), I’ll be playing club.”
Calderon understands the district wants to follow the COVID-19 metrics and play it safe during the pandemic. PXU has relied on virtual classes so far this year.
There were only three weeks of football games played in a late fall start, but it suddenly got shut down when the infections began to rise in Arizona again.
When the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee recommended in January to the AIA Executive Board not to start the winter season until the metrics returned to what it was in late September and early October, five board members initially voted not to move forward with winter sports. One of those in the majority was Zach Munuz, who is the athletic director for PXU.
When the AIA board held another vote four days later after receiving criticism from the public, the board voted 5-4 to move forward with winter sports with the stricter protocols. Munuz again voted against moving ahead.
“The district as a whole answers to a community, the welfare of families and everyone,” Calderon said. “Everyone wants to compete. But there are bigger things in life that really matter most.
“Obviously a kid getting COVID. Will it kill him? It’s unlikely. But kids have older parents and grandparents at home. Sometimes we don’t know.”
Carl Hayden players will never know what could have been this year.
Not only Yepiz and his 20 goals from last year’s 23-2 campaign returned, but Alexis Victoria and his 16 goals.
Third-leading scorer Nelson Rodriguez (seven goals) also returned, along with goal keeper Adan Casas, who appeared in 16 games last season.
Last year, as the No. 3 seed at state, Carl Hayden shocked top-seed and 2019 state champion Tucson Sunnyside 3-0 in the championship game.
“I would want to defend the championship,” Yepiz said. “It would look good. If they doubted us, they wouldn’t be able to.”
Calderon said there would be nothing to prove playing against only PXU teams in the spring. The last two years, the Falcons rolled through fellow PXU schools without losing.
Two seasons ago, all those wins against PXU teams were wiped out, because it had to forfeit them for using an ineligible player who had competed in a club tournament during the season.
It kept the Falcons from going to state and proving they’re the best in Arizona.
Calderon wanted this team to be able to play a state schedule.
“As a person, no one can judge,” Calderon said. “As a coach, I’m not one to judge. They’re making decisions for students and their families. To go after district for leadership in this type of situation, we find ourselves asking for too much.
“Soccer happens outdoors. At the end of the day, they’re still making a decision for soccer players. That’s one way to look at it. The other way, kids want to compete. Prove again that they can compete against the best.
“We win it again? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Does this diminish who we are as a soccer team and a school? It doesn’t change anything about me as a coach or the players that couldn’t participate. We don’t have anything to prove to anyone.”