Daytona Beach, Florida. Going in to Saturday night’s shootout, there were plenty of story lines to cover. How would HMS recover after having their kingdom gutted? More on them later. Another story that’s going to get talked about on your Sunday round tables are the Busches. The Busches have been known as NASCAR’s bad boys. Kurt Busch, who was shown the door because of his conduct toward Roger Penske and his employees is being given a second chance by James Finch and Phoenix Racing. Kyle Busch is still in Mr. Rogers neighborhood with Joe Gibbs Racing. Daytona was all about two by two tandem racing last year. But NASCAR is governed by a sanctioning body that listens to its fans, so on Saturday night, tandem racing was gone, which was a bad move, because there were a lot of damaged race cars. As for the racing, it came down to Smoke and Busch. The ironic thing about this matchup was the fact that Steve Addington, who used to be Kyle Busch’s crew chief now joins the defending champion, Tony Stewart. Addington replaces Darien Grubb, last year’s winning crew chief on the 14 team. Look for the demolition derby to continue and look for race cars to flip over on their sides as long as NASCAR continues to listen to its fans, and that is ridiculous. You’re trying to protect your drivers by making NASCAR safer. What we saw on Saturday night is inexcusable. Quit listening to your fans, NASCAR and go back to the way it was, or you’re going to have another Dale Earnhardt situation if you are not careful and one of your champions will go to NASCAR heaven.
