“You drive it. You don’t ask, you just drive,” Keselowski said. “You want to make excuses for not being successful — you could do that, or you can go out there and put it all on the line and try to win.”

Which he did, despite being involved in a pair of earlier scrapes that appeared to take him out of the running. Keselowski’s Ford was one of nine cars scattered when Kyle Busch tapped Kasey Kahne on lap 33, sparking an accident that knocked out top competitors Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick. That crash banged up the vehicle’s nose and knocked in some fender braces, Wolfe said, but quick repair work by Keselowski’s Penske Racing crew kept him on the lead lap — only to see him caught up in another incident on lap 138.

That time, Keselowski was sandwiched between David Reutimann and Trevor Bayne in a chain-reaction fender-bender that left the No. 2 car swerving to the apron, where it bottomed out hard. That incident knocked the back end of the vehicle out of shape, as Keselowski discovered when he reported he was holding the steering wheel straight, but the car wasn’t necessarily traveling in the same direction. More pit stops and speedy repair jobs ensued. Was the driver ever concerned?

“Hell yeah, I was concerned,” Keselowski said. “But once they drop the green, there is no room to be concerned.”

Keselowski eventually reported that the car was good enough, and even better when it was out front — where the Penske driver found himself thanks to some pit strategy that involved him topping off on fuel, and assuming the lead with 26 laps remaining before a caution issued for Jeff Burton hitting the wall. Somehow, a vehicle that had its front end covered in Bare Bond was streaking along the high line in command. It even withstood a knock on the nose from a piece of debris, which Wolfe surmised was aluminum from another car’s crush panel.

For Keselowski, though, the debris wasn’t the problem — it was the caution that followed, which would ultimately doom his bid to drive his bandaged car into Daytona’s Victory Lane. Johnson had nosed ahead before the yellow was issued, allowing the five-time champion to assume the high line for a restart with six laps remaining. The outside lane had been the preferred line all of Speedweeks, and Sunday was no different.

“I knew that the 2 had some damage and wasn’t going to be really fast. That’s the only thing I thought about,” Johnson said. “… The numbers are everything in the draft, and there were far more cars on the outside lane then the inside. It was just so hard to make time on the bottom, because there were fewer cars.”

Keselowski knew he was done. “The yellow came out exactly when we were an inch or two behind Jimmie. That set it up for him to have the high lane on the restart, and we weren’t strong enough with the damage to our car to do anything once that happened,” he said. “You saw all day that the high lane was drastically faster than the lower lanes, and that showed up there on the last restart and he was able to drive away.”

Keselowski was shuffled back in the final restart, but regrouped for a fourth-place finish that matched his best at Daytona.

“Just a great way to start the season for us with a top-five,” Wolfe said. “We haven’t had the greatest luck here at Daytona, and it’s going to be a learning curve here early in the season.”

That’s because Sprint Cup teams are breaking in new vehicles known as Generation-6 cars. Late Sunday afternoon, though, Keselowski’s vehicle looked more like something that had just rolled off a figure-eight track.

“Seeing it now, a lot of that Bare Bond was loose at the very end,” Wolfe said. “The front end, obviously, wasn’t very clean on it. But it just shows how important that high lane is. When you get everybody lined up, as strong as (Johnson) is, it’s just hard on the bottom. I wouldn’t say I’m totally shocked by it, but who knows what it would blow in the wind tunnel right now.”

READ MORE:

READ: Danica earns 500 respect	Read: Keselowski drives through damage	Watch: Johnson hits Victory Lane	READ: Daytona 500 takes shape

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Sunday, that was small consolation.

“There’s pieces that are supposed to stay together, and they didn’t stay together,” said Busch, who won Thursday’s second qualifying race for the Daytona 500, but finished 34th in the main event. “I hate it for this whole team. These guys — they do a great job and work too hard, and it sounds a lot like 2012 already.”

Kenseth moved to JGR in the offseason after a long and very successful tenure at Roush Fenway Racing, where he won 24 races, including the Daytona 500 in 2009 and 2012. He had suffered a vibration earlier in Sunday’s event, but said that was unrelated to the problem that ultimately knocked him out of the race. Before the engine failure, everything about his first start in the No. 20 was going smoothly — in fact, he had congratulated his pit crew on their best stop of the day right before smoke began to emit from his back end.

“Here’s the thing — it could always be worse,” he said. “We could have ran last all day and be sitting in the garage. So I mean, there’s a lot to look forward to. As disappointed as I am, it would be easy to be disappointed and throw my Gatorade at you or whatever. But man, there’s a lot to look forward to. I just can’t help sitting here and thinking how thankful I am they put this together for me, and I just can’t wait to get to Phoenix.”

Busch, meanwhile, wasn’t as sanguine, likely because he’s experienced such frustrations before. He missed the Chase for the Sprint Cup last season, partly because of failures like engine blowups in consecutive races and a brake rotor fracture that led to a crash. Busch wasn’t nearly as dominant as his teammate Sunday, but had a car that easily ran among the leaders until it wound up in the garage.

“It just shows you how much more devastation there is to it when you can have cars like that, and running that fast, and that they stay up front and they’re good,” Busch said. “All of the guys at JGR built an awesome piece. All three of us have been fast since we’ve been down here. (This is) the best we’ve qualified here in a while, so kudos to all of the guys building these cars. But we’ve got to have engines that last.”

Denny Hamlin was the lone Gibbs driver to make it to the end Sunday, leading 33 laps before finishing 14th. Kenseth tried to focus on the positive — mechanical problems are repairable, he said, and Daytona is just the beginning of a long season ahead.

“You don’t totally forget about it, because you go back and try to fix whatever’s wrong so you don’t drop out of races again,” he said. “But you kind of forget about it and move on to Phoenix and start over. I learned a long time ago, good or bad, as soon as Speedweeks is over, forget about it. It doesn’t have a bearing on the rest of your season unless you’re affected. The only year we missed the Chase, we won the Daytona 500. So it doesn’t make or break your season. There are a whole lot of races to go. I feel like I have the greatest team in the garage, and I’m looking forward to getting to Phoenix and getting after it there.”

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READ: Danica earns 500 respect	Read: Keselowski drives through damage	Watch: Johnson hits Victory Lane	READ: Daytona 500 takes shape

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“Hopefully we can keep the pressure on them and stay up in the top five in the points and win some races. I want to really try to win some more races this year. That’s our focus.”

And Earnhardt is serious about that. After last year’s second-place finish in the Daytona season-opener, he only finished worse than 10th three times through June and a result worse than 15th once in that span.

He picked up his first win in four years at Michigan later in the summer and was leading the Sprint Cup Series championship standings by August. Although he qualified for the Chase and was even considered a front-runner, he missed two races recovering from a concussion and ultimately finished 12^th in the standings.

In that case, it wasn’t about where the season ended, but how it started off. 

NASCAR’s most famous stage, Daytona International Speedway, has always been Earnhardt’s playground. He won the 2004 Daytona 500 and 2001 July Sprint Cup race here and has six Nationwide Series victories on the 2.5-mile track.

He’s won three Daytona 500 qualifying races and a pair of Sprint Unlimited exhibition events too.

So it surprised no one, that when the checkered flag waved Sunday, Earnhardt was in contention to win. He hung around among the leaders all afternoon, but never led a lap, instead carefully negotiating his way through the field, plotting his ultimate strategy.

“I just went to where I needed to go all day long,’’ Earnhardt said. “You had to really pick and choose your battles and really be decisive on whether to go or not go on certain runs.’’

“I really don’t remember much — except for the last lap — of the rest of the race … anything we did, who we raced with even. It was a lot of fun, I had a good time.’’

“I was just trying to get the best finish I could,’’ Earnhardt said, smiling as he explained why he chose not to stick with his former driver Danica Patrick as a drafting partner in the final laps.

“I wanted to get in the media center to thank my crew and everything. Was just trying to get on the podium.’’

Like so many of his fellow competitors, the Daytona 500 remains the ultimate prize. And while coming this close this many times is encouraging, Earnhardt says there’s nothing like celebrating this victory.

“You just don’t know when you’ll ever get the opportunity again or if you’ll ever get that opportunity again,’’ Earnhardt said. “I knew before I won in 2004, I was reserved to the idea I may be trying to win this race my entire career, because I knew all too well how that was for my father. 

“I felt so much relief when I did win it, I’m ready to do it again.’’

READ MORE:

READ: Danica earns 500 respect	Read: Keselowski drives through damage	Watch: Johnson hits Victory Lane	READ: Daytona 500 takes shape

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Patrick — who also became the first woman in history to lead the Daytona 500 (twice for five laps) — waved acknowledgements to the fans celebrating her accomplishment and appreciated Gibson’s praise. But while Patrick smiled politely, she was still intensely mulling over what could have been, as she was third with one lap remaining, convinced she had a better shot at victory.

“I would imagine that pretty much anyone would kick themselves and say what could I have, should I have done to give myself that opportunity to win,’’ Patrick said of the race’s typical last-lap free-for-all.

“I think that’s what I was feeling today, was uncertainty as to how I was going to accomplish that. There was plenty of times while you were cruising along and I was talking to Tony and my spotter on the radio, ‘What do you see people doing, what’s working, what is not?’ I was thinking in the car, ‘How am I going to do this? I didn’t know what to do exactly.

“So I feel like maybe that’s just my inexperience. Maybe that’s me not thinking hard enough. I don’t know. Getting creative enough. I’m not sure. I definitely was a little uncertain how I was going to be able to do it. I think (race runner-up) Dale (Earnhardt Jr.) did a nice job and shows what happens when you plan it out, you drop back, get that momentum and you’re able to go to the front.

“You know, I think he taught me something and I’m sure I’ll watch the race and there will be other scenarios out there that I’ll see that can teach me, too.’’

It’s exactly the mindset that has propelled Patrick’s career and resulted in her string of historic accomplishments — from becoming the first woman to lead the Indianapolis 500 (as a rookie in 2005) to becoming the first female Daytona 500 pole-sitter in the race’s storied 55-year history.

But that highly-driven, what-did-I-leave-on-the-table attitude is also what she hopes will put her down in the history books as a great race car driver, not only a great woman race car driver.

“I didn’t even think about it being Danica, but just another car on the track that was fast and I think that’s a credit to her,’’ Daytona 500 winner Jimmie Johnson said of running alongside her for much of the race.

It was high praise from the five-time Sprint Cup champion about the series’ high-profile Rookie of the Year candidate. For much of the week, she had deflected credit for winning the pole position to her crew for their work in preparing the No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet SS.

And even as she suited up Sunday afternoon for the 500, many wondered if she could really compete alongside NASCAR’s best on its brightest stage.

While her fellow front-row starter Jeff Gordon slid by her before the first turn of the first lap even, she held tough and rallied to take the point twice for five laps and ran solidly among the top five and top 10 for most of the 200-lap race.

“The pole was wonderful,’’ Patrick explained. “Tony Gibson and those guys are the ones that should be really proud of that one and I know they are.

“But today being able to stay up front, get to the lead at one point, just run up in the top 10, for me that was more of an accomplishment.’’

Earnhardt and third-place finisher Mark Martin, who both passed her on the final lap, say they were impressed with her effort. They insisted she proved herself as capable as any of the other drivers — race favorites and former champions among them — on this first tough test of the 2013 season.

“She’s going to make a lot of history all year long,’’ said Earnhardt, her team owner in the Nationwide Series the past two years.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch her progress. I think she’s done her best work in the Cup car myself. I think for whatever reason she seems to get a lot more out of that car.

“She’s got a great level head. She’s a racer. She knows what’s coming. I enjoy racing with her. … it’s just going to be a lot of fun having her in the series.’’

Even as Patrick dutifully answered questions in the post-race interview session, her body language suggested she will be thinking about this Daytona 500 for a while.

More than once she lost some positions getting off pit road and long after the checkered flag was still beating herself up a bit about not leading the first lap.

But the five laps she did lead on Sunday make her one of only 13 drivers in racing history to lead both the Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500.

And if it’s up to Gibson, any lingering thoughts she still has about this Daytona 500 will be mostly positive.

“I’m jacked up man, that was awesome,’’ Gibson said after speaking with Patrick on pit lane.

“We definitely had a shot to win it there and that’s all you can ask for. You can’t do nothing about those guys getting (last lap) runs on you.

“I’m so proud of Danica and everybody on the GoDaddy.com Chevy. She impressed the heck out of me all day long and the pit crew did a fantastic job. I’m just looking forward to every week, and every week we’re going to get better and better.

“I’m so proud of Danica, I can’t think straight right now,’’ continued an overjoyed Gibson, who has worked on four Daytona 500-winning cars.

“We wouldn’t let her race in the 150s or practice hard (to protect her car) so to come out here and be the first woman to sit on the pole for the Daytona 500 and the first woman to lead a lap and have the highest finish … what else can you want?’’

“She held her ground and did what she needed to do. We could have been on our roof just as easy so I’m so proud to come away with a top-10 and we will build on this.

“That’s how you gain respect with these guys. There were a ton of guys that drafted with her and respected her. 

"They understand she can do this.’’

READ MORE:

READ: Danica earns 500 respect	Read: Keselowski drives through damage	Watch: Johnson hits Victory Lane	READ: Daytona 500 takes shape

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