Junior's electrifying charge salvages a Daytona fiasco

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- It had become nothing short of a fiasco, with a pothole in the track surface leaving the grandstands half-empty, and multiple green-white-checkered attempts leaving race cars fully wrecked. After nearly six hours, with spectators shivering in a cold and dark they had not expected, it was drawing comparisons to the tire debacle that had plagued Indianapolis Motor Speedway two years ago. It was difficult to find anyone outside of a driver suit who wasn't prepared to label the Daytona 500 as a disaster.

And who could argue with them? Twice the race had to be halted under a red flag because of a hole that developed from unseasonably cold temperatures, a fissure in the low groove of Turn 2 that likely chewed up one of Jimmie Johnson's tires and later took a bite out of Clint Bowyer's front splitter. Fans began to stream out of the gates long before the event finally ended. Drivers cursed over the radio and sparks flew as cars bottomed out trying to a avoid a spackle-colored patch. All the momentum NASCAR had built over the last two weeks, with the furious finishes in the qualifying races and the mania over Danica Patrick, seemed swallowed by a football-shaped gap in the asphalt.

The hole story

A pothole approximately 18 inches long developed in the lower groove of Turn 2 at Daytona, forcing NASCAR officials to halt the Daytona 500 under a red flag Sunday afternoon. The stoppage came 122 laps into the race with Clint Bowyer in the lead. The race was red-flagged a second time with only 39 laps remaining after the patch crumbled.

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• France on track situation
• Johnson has tire problem

And then came Junior.

He came out of nowhere, literally, wedged way back in a hornet's nest of stock cars as the field took the green flag for the final time. The No. 88 car had endured a problematic day, getting snookered on an early pit stop and struggling to find the right adjustments and seemingly destined for another disappointing finish. Dale Earnhardt Jr. had never really been a factor Sunday, and with a little over a lap remaining he appeared trapped deep on the high side as the contenders streaked to the front at the bottom.

But suddenly, as the cars passed under the white flag, something stupendous happened, something that reminded everyone of what Earnhardt is capable of, something that harkened back to the days early last decade when Junior owned Daytona International Speedway as if he had a deed to the place. He muscled past Carl Edwards. He blew by David Reutimann. He charged by Martin Truex Jr. And then, like a fullback barreling through the tackles with his head down and his elbows out, he wedged himself in between Greg Biffle and Clint Bowyer. Cars wiggled. Mouths dropped. And then he was clear, past them all, with only Jamie McMurray between him and an unthinkable second victory in the Daytona 500.

"I saw the 88," McMurray said later, "and I was like, 'Crap.' "

He was in the minority. It was one of those moments only Earnhardt can create, the kind that galvanized fans remaining in the grandstand and brought them whooping to their feet, and likely made those who left early second-guess their decision. The Daytona 500 was extended to 208 laps under NASCAR's revised green-white-checkered rule, and had it gone to 209, Earnhardt would almost certainly have won. Ultimately, he ran out of room -- off the final corner Earnhardt pulled to within a car length of McMurray, now driving a car co-owned by Earnhardt's stepmother Teresa, but never had a real chance of getting around.

But in a way, it didn't matter. It had been a brief but electrifying charge that for a moment made everyone forget about the delays and the red flags and that one damned pothole, an instance that for the first time in a long time showed everyone the real power of Junior, a 10th-to-second bailout of the Daytona 500 like many hope a revived Earnhardt can do for the sport. Oh, no question, it didn't soothe over everything -- it didn't make up for all the people who got fed up and walked out, it didn't absolve the speedway for struggling to find an efficient method of patching the hole in the track surface, it didn't change the fact that many left NASCAR's biggest race grumbling and unhappy.

While it lasted, though, it was spectacular. And in a very small way, it allowed NASCAR and the speedway to salvage something out of a very long and difficult day.

"I have no clue how he did it," crew chief Lance McGrew said. "Still don't know. Somehow he managed to find a hole where there wasn't a hole, and we wound up passing nine cars in two laps to finish second. Pretty impressive."

The view from the driver's seat? "It was all a blur," said Earnhardt, who admitted he didn't remember much about it. " I was just going wherever they weren't. I really don't enjoy being that aggressive. But if there was enough room for the radiator to fit, you just kind of held the gas down and prayed for the best. It was a lot of fun."

Foe the speedway it was a godsend, particularly considering the events that had preceded it. The first sign of a problem with the race track came just past the halfway mark, when Johnson shredded a tire for what appeared to be mysterious reasons. "We may have a red flag here," he told his crew over the radio, as he came to pit road for repairs. "Looks like a big piece of the track came up." Indeed it had, a chunk that speedway president Robin Braig said was 9 inches wide by 15 inches long by 2 inches deep, and had evidently been carved out of the 31-year-old surface by colder-than-normal temperatures. Many immediately recalled the 2004 incident at Martinsville Speedway, when a chunk of the track that punched a hole in Jeff Gordon's radiator required an hour and 15 minutes to repair.

This one, though, would prove considerably more difficult to fix. Daytona's engineers tried three different compounds until they found one they thought would work, toiling in a shaded, colder portion of the race track as cars sat idle under a red flag. After an hour and 40 minutes, the vehicles began rolling again. The remedy worked -- for about 40 laps. "It's wide open again," Kevin Harvick screamed over the radio. "Everything they put in it is out." The hole hadn't only hollowed out again, but had increased in size.

Officials went through the garage area rummaging for Bondo, a putty that hardens when it comes in contact with the air, and is typically used by fabricators to repair body damage on race cars. They used jet dryers and acetylene torches to try and warm the area so the filler would take. After 45 minutes, Daytona's asphalt specialists finally had a remedy that would last until the end of race. But many in the estimated crowd of 175,000 didn't stick around to see it.

"We take full responsibility," said Braig, who added that his staff walked the track prior to the event, and discovered no problems with the surface. "We've got to get better at doing our patchwork. If we have to do it again, we have to figure out the compounds. We've really got to understand the temperature and the heat of the pavement. We just couldn't get it to bond."

What they did get was a finish that rekindled moments of Junior past, that rendered the pothole forgettable for a little while, that almost made sitting through this day-to-night Daytona 500 feel worth it. "He's still got it," Earnhardt's public relations man, Mike Davis, exhorted on Twitter. Everyone finally got that one little glimpse they've been waiting for, even if Earnhardt didn't win, even if it took six hours and two red flags and umpteen pounds of crushed sheet metal to see it.

"Normally, you just can't make moves like that and make it work," McGrew said. "Somehow, someway, Dale made it work."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.