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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: Like Kissing Your Sister
Legendary coach Vince Lombardi once famously observed that a tie game "...was like kissing your sister..." - I think I finally understand what he means...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted February 16, 2009   Daytona Beach, FL

Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers football dynasty of the 1960s, once famously observed that a tie game “was like kissing your sister.” After watching the Daytona 500 end under a rain delay, I think I finally understand what he means.

Make no mistake about it, Matt Kenseth was a deserving winner. He was in the right place at the right time and made the winning pass on the next-to-the-last lap of green-flag racing. He richly deserved the victory, so my hat’s off to Kenseth, crew chief Drew Blickensderfer and car owner Jack Roush, who like Roger Penske last year, ended a couple of decades of frustration with his first Daytona 500 win.

I have absolutely no quarrel with who won. How he won, though, left a lot to be desired. There’s something wholly unsatisfying about a race being decided while the cars are parked on pit road. It was a little like kissing your sister. Rain-shortened races just aren’t much fun.

And when it’s the Super Bowl of stock-car racing, the biggest event on NASCAR’s schedule, seeing the race end under a rain delay just sucks. That said, though, NASCAR made the right call. When I left Daytona International Speedway three hours after the end of the race, it really was still raining. And given that it takes up to three hours to dry the track, I don’t think NASCAR had much of an alternative but to call the race when it did. Remember last year’s fiasco at Auto Club Speedway, when they didn’t officially rain the race out until something like 1:30 a.m. EST?

Still, I hate that it ended like that. And one of the reasons I hated it so much, is that virtually every preliminary race leading up to the 500 was great. The Bud Shootout, Gatorade Duels, Camping World Truck Series and Nationwide races were all fabulous. Had we had another breathtaking finish in the 500, we’d be talking about one of the greatest Daytona Speedweeks of all time.

Instead, we’re talking about kissing our own sisters.

Some other observations:

• I never in a million years thought I’d ever see the normally unemotional Kenseth cry. Good for him. NASCAR needs more emotion, not less, and lest you think that these well-paid superstars don’t care, Kenseth’s display in victory lane told a very different story.

• Kevin Harvick now officially hasn’t won a NASCAR Sprint Cup points race in two full years. And I humbly submit to you that after his Bud Shootout victory and his Daytona 500 runner-up finish, Harvick is the fastest, most dangerous driver to ride a two-year non-winning streak. He looked great all throughout Speedweeks.


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