Stewart eyes rebound, more deserving fate
Which Chase for the Sprint Cup contenders are looking forward to this race more than others?
You can start with Tony Stewart, who is ninth in points and who dominated Sunday's race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and deserved better than 13th after rain denied him and other leaders the chance to put those final pit stops to use.
He won this race in 2005 and '06 and came within half a lap of winning this year's Daytona 500 before finishing third. His last 11 Daytona starts have yielded eight top-seven finishes, and he has plenty of motivation.
That's not saying that Jeff Gordon (six Daytona wins) or 2007 500 champion Kevin Harvick lack for incentive. Like Stewart, they are tired of being asked when victory will come and hope the 2.5-mile superspeedway ends their droughts while boosting their season-ending, 10-race title-run prospects.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. (two wins) and 2006 Daytona 500 winner Jimmie Johnson hope to reinforce their bids, creating a long line of favorites to break through.
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Can Daytona help Kurt Busch get into serious Chase contention?
It's possible. Though the 2004 Cup champion remained 15th after last year's third-place finish here, that run began a stout nine-race stretch run in which he won twice and was no worse than 11th to make the 10-race playoff.
Busch has been pretty strong at Daytona recently, finishing second to Penske Racing teammate Ryan Newman in February for his third top-three in four starts with 149 laps led.
Busch has seven top-fives and seven top-10s in 15 starts overall. Coming off Sunday's opportunistic New Hampshire victory, in which he stayed out during a late caution and won when rain shortened the race, he has a chance to follow up and improve on his 18th-place standing with nine races left in the regular season.
"We've certainly played the bridesmaid's role for our fair share of times,"
Busch said in his prerace release. "Sooner or later, you have to be the bride. … Maybe there's some kind of karma involved. We're heading in the right direction."
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How do drivers like racing twice in the same week?
Book-ending the week at different venues is tough in terms of time and travel, given the logistics of traveling, with sponsor commitments to honor in between.
But Saturday night racing takes many drivers down memory lane to their formative years of competing in weekly features at the local short track.
Not to mention, one huge intangible.
"Our travel schedule gets old after a while,"
Greg Biffle said, "but one thing about the Saturday night races is it does give us Sunday off. It is a short week, and we need to be in Daytona early. But at the same time, we have that Sunday off to kind of make up for that, and that's good."
