NASCAR back on top???

NASCAR's Superbowl, The Daytona 500, just hit a home run and they can thank Mother Nature & Dale Jr for that. Leading up to Sunday's Daytona 500... racing at Daytona last week was a yawner, let's be honest. The Sprint Unlimited on Saturday Feb 15th really didn't have any excitement racing wise. Sure, they crashed up a few car, but a boring race. Then Thursday Night's Duels had the same results... follow each other, not a lot of passing, and then a crash on the final lap of the last Duel race.

Sunday's Daytona 500 started off as slow as the rest of the week had been. A little passing and not much excitement until the sky let loose with showers, thunderstorms, and even a tornado watch blew through Daytona Beach. This created a 6 hour delay in the race. FOX, which was carrying the race, decided to fill their programming up with last years race during the rain delay. As the they finished up showing last years race and Jimmie Johnson winning... Twitter started exploding congratulating Jimmie on back to back wins. I guess people were to busy watching the race to read the scrolling message at the bottom of the screen saying "We're under a rain delay and your watching the 2013 Daytona 500".

Once the showers moved out and NASCAR was able to get the race going around 7:45PM, excitement started to build. Now we're under the lights at Daytona.... maybe they should think about keeping it this way in the future. When all the big wrecks cleared out and the final checkered flew, Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR's Most Popular Driver for 11 straight years, wins. NASCAR needed this badly, especially after announcing the new Chase rules which doesn't sit well with over 90% of the loyal NASCAR fans.

Congratulations also to Cedar Rapids native Landon Cassill. Landon did a fantastic job keeping his car in the top 15 and avoiding the big ones all night long and finished 12th. Landon is driving for a small funded team and only Casey Mears small funded team finished ahead of Landon, in 10th.