Daytona Beach, Florida. With the Budweiser Shootout a distant memory in 2012, 43 drivers returned to Daytona with their eyes on the prize. Sunday belonged to last year’s runner up to Tony Stewart, but it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish in NASCAR’s Super Bowl. No one remembers who finished 43rd. Everyone remembers the Bayne of NASCAR, because he went from “who’s he?” to a Daytona victor. What will happen to cousin Carl now that he starts from the number one position in the 54th running of the 500? All winter, the attention has been on Stewart and how he would react to defending a title and the loss of one of the key cogs in his kingdom, Darien Grubb. We have 26 races to find out, but the closest Chase in NASCAR history is a distant memory.
