Daytona's Speedweeks
Dateline: 2/17/99From the qualifying races through to the legendary finish to the Daytona 500, Speedweeks 1999 will live forever.
Simply Awesome
There is no other way to describe Dale Earnhardt's utter domination of the Gatorade 125 mile qualifying races. Starting in 1990, "The Intimidator" has won every qualifying race that he has been in. This incredible streak covers 10 years now and includes every race in the 90's. Dale Earnhardt is the master of Daytona with a total of 33 wins on the famed superspeedway including the 1998 Daytona 500.
I am not an Earnhardt fan, however there has never been, and there likely will never be again, one driver who so completely defines a race track and what it takes to win on it as Dale Earnhardt and Daytona. Simply Awesome.
Doom And Despair
The anti-restrictor plate fans have a lot to feed on this year. From the ARCA series through the Winston Cup race every single event held during Speedweeks was marred by an ugly multi-car crash. It's well past time for NASCAR to come up with an alternative to the restrictor plate.
The Daytona 500 saw Kenny Irwin trying to back out of the throttle and let his teammate get in line. But Kenny was just half-a-second too slow and Dale Jarrett came down 3 inches too soon. That light tick of the bumper caused a twelve car pile-up that ended the day for many legitimate contenders.
Kenny has unfairly taken some heat this week for causing that wreck. It was simply a racing wreck. It's unfortunate that some very fast cars were eliminated, and it's even more unfortunate that it was started by teammates, but I don't think that there were any glaring errors in judgement.
Disagree? Think Kenny Irwin ran over DJ? Think Dale Earnhardt has just been lucky ten times in-a-row? Stop by the bulletin boards and let me know what you think.
