When winner is bothered, something clearly wrong

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Fans will talk about it on message boards. Television will replay it incessantly. The last lap finish between Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart, with Busch climbing from a destroyed car after heavy contact with the outside wall a few hundred yards from the finish line in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400, was nearly an instant replay of the one four months earlier at Talladega involving Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski.

Last-lap drama

Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch were teammates last year but that bond was out the window racing for the checkered flag at Daytona. While Stewart celebrated, Busch left fuming.

• Final Laps: Daytona
• Victory Lane: Daytona
• Post-race reactions
• Press Pass: T. Stewart

The 100,000 or so in attendance, most of whom booed Busch earlier in the evening and cheered at the end, probably spent the drive home recounting what they saw and debating who was at fault.

But when the winning driver is bothered by the way the race ended, you have to wonder if there's a way to fix the inherent flaws of restrictor-plate racing. Unfortunately, if anyone has come up with a better idea, they haven't stepped up and shared it with the powers that be.

"It's just a bad situation," Stewart said. "It's not bad because we're put in a bad position. It just is what it is. I don't feel as much gratification from winning this race as I probably should, I guess, because I don't like the way the outcome happened."

Jimmie Johnson, who finished third, agreed.

"There is nothing to do to stop it," Johnson said. "It's plate racing. We're damned if we do, we're damned if we don't.

"They're just racing. Tony didn't mean to dump him. Same thing with Talladega. It's just the product of restrictor-plate racing and every time we leave these restrictor-plate tracks, there's questions about how we can keep from having the big wreck and things like that, and you just can't. When you run plates and run wide-open all the way around the track, situations like this come around."

If anyone knows what Busch was experiencing in that blink of an eye, it would be Edwards.

"I was really concerned about Kyle," Edwards said. "I saw the right side of his car lift off the ground [when] he hit the fence. Man, that's a hard hit. But, I guess, it's exciting. The fans were all pumped up about it, but I was real nervous for him. I'm just glad we got through there and nobody hit him -- I hope nobody hit him a second time. It was just a wild event."

Coming out of Turn 4, Busch went down low to keep Stewart from getting a run to the inside. But when Stewart went up the track, so did Busch. The two cars touched, sending Busch careening hard into the wall as Stewart's car stayed aimed at the finish line. Several other cars then became involved, including Kasey Kahne and Joey Logano.

"I don't want any part of winning a race because the guy who was leading the race got wrecked," Stewart said. "I don't know that we did anything wrong. I've seen replays of it, and he's protecting his position, which is what he's got to do. I mean, that's what he has to do as a driver. He can't just sit there and let us make a move like that and not try to defend it.

"But it puts him, it puts us, it put Kasey Kahne behind him, in a bad position where it drove Kyle's car all the way up to Kasey's windshield."

Just like at Talladega, all of the drivers were able to walk away without serious injury. But what bothered Stewart more than the danger of close-quarters racing at 190 mph was unintentionally wrecking a competitor who had been an ally all evening.

"I worked really good with Kyle all day long and Kyle was the guy that I chose to have restart behind all me day, and we worked really well together," Stewart said. "You know, you don't want to see somebody who ran up front all day lose that many spots and lose an opportunity to win because of an accident like that coming to the checkered flag."

The incident was nearly a carbon copy of the Edwards-Keselowski crash, although Busch's car didn't get up into the catchfence. But in both instances, the leader made an ill-timed block that put him in imminent danger.

"These cars punch a big hole in the air and the second-place guy can sometimes get a run," Johnson said. "It's not strong enough to where the leader knows he can't block it. It's a slow run that they get. Over time, we all know that you can aggressively block and that time, it just didn't work for [Busch]."

And as long as there is restrictor-plate racing, there will be blocks for the lead on the last lap and sometimes somebody will crash. And every driver in Saturday night's race will leave Daytona wondering if they could be next.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

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