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• Dale Earnhardt Jr., on the other hand, had a wretched Daytona 500, with two unforced errors on pit road that took him out of contention for the victory and a crash with Brian Vickers that took out 10 cars. At the very least, Earnhardt shared equal blame for that wreck and personally, I thought it was his fault. By not penalizing him as they did with Jason Leffler in a virtually identical situation in the Nationwide race the day before, NASCAR officials showed no guts and fueled conspiracy theories everywhere.

• Few drivers have been through more adversity in the last year than AJ Allmendinger, who has always behaved with class and professionalism. It was nice to see him race his way into the Daytona 500 and score a well-earned third place. During the post-race press conference, Harvick praised Allmendinger and pointed out that the ‘Dinger has survived and done well in NASCAR, while a whole host of open-wheel stars already have come and gone. True that.

And who would have thought that in its first race, Richard Petty Motorsports would put three of its cars among the top nine finishers? Great job, guys, although Elliott Sadler’s going to be kicking himself for a long time after getting passed by Kenseth just one lap before the final caution came out.

• Joe Gibbs Racing had all three of its cars taken out in the Daytona 500 by other drivers. Kyle Busch, who led the most laps in the 500 and clearly was the fastest car, was collateral damage in the Earnhardt-Vickers blunder, and so was Denny Hamlin. Joey Logano got turned and put into the wall by fellow rookie Scott Speed. Not a good day for JGR.

• I was stunned by Hendrick Motorsports’ lack of dominance in the Daytona 500 after being so fast in the preliminaries. Mark Martin, one of the pre-race favorites, finished 16th and led just one lap, the same number as Junior led. Three-time defending series champ Jimmie Johnson didn’t lead a single lap and was never a factor. In fact, the highest-finishing of the Hendrick Chevrolets was Jeff Gordon, who was 13th, after battling tire problems. Gordon was the only Hendrick driver to lead more than a single lap of the 500.

• Stewart-Haas Racing was more competitive out of the box than I thought they would be. Kudos for a job well done.

• Last but not least, remember one important thing about Daytona: Don’t extrapolate too much out of it. The next three races in Southern California, Las Vegas and Atlanta will be a much better barometer of who has their act together and who doesn’t. We’re in for an interesting season, that’s for sure.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to