July 3, 2006

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – This should give you a good idea of how crazy things were Saturday night in the Pepsi 400:

With three laps to go, Boris Said was leading the race.

It was that kind of show, one where every few laps you shook your head and thought: "You've got to be kidding me."

But the end wasn't a surprise.

Tony Stewart took the checkered flag in the No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet, just as he did one year ago. And he climbed the fence to the flag stand again, forcing his pudgy frame up and over to wave the flag to the fans.

"That was harder than the race," Stewart said. "I'm too fat for that. Our team really needed this. We had two rough weeks at Michigan and Sonoma, so it's good to get this one."

The race ended under caution when debris was spotted in Turn 3 on the final lap.

Said, the road racer who started the surprises by winning the pole Friday, gambled at the end and got to the front by staying on the track when the leaders pitted.

Stewart was 10th with nine laps to go but zoomed forward on four fresh tires. He easily passed Said on the outside with two laps remaining.

Kyle Busch finished second and big brother Kurt Busch was third, but the happiest man at Daytona was Said with a fourth-place showing.

"It feels like a win for us," he said. "To lead out there was the coolest thing in the world. With three laps to go, I felt like Rocky Balboa in the 15th round.

"If Dale Earnhardt [Sr.] is watching up there, I know he's laughing his tail off to see a tall skinny kid with an Afro leading at Daytona. It's the highlight of my racing career."

Said's near victory was the big shocker, but this race included one unusual moment after another.

The first caution flag flew on Lap 8 when a beach ball was rolling down the backstretch. Even at Daytona Beach, no one had seen that before.

Another oddity was three sets of green-flag pits stops, unbelievable in a 160-lap race at Daytona.

The typical big wreck of a restrictor-plate race never happened. In fact, no one hit anything all night until the final 14 laps.

That's when any chance Jimmie Johnson had of winning both 2006 Daytona events came to an end. Johnson was running fourth when he was in the middle of a three-wide situation heading into Turn 3.

Johnson's car got loose and slid up the track, slamming into Bobby Labonte. It pushed Labonte into the wall as the two cars were locked through Turn 4.

It also ruined what could have been the best race of the season for Labonte and Petty Enterprises.

Johnson's lead over Matt Kenseth in the Nextel Cup standings now is 13 points. Kenseth had a little fender-bender on pit road with Dave Blaney and fell back to 33rd. But Kenseth finished fifth.

He fared better than two of his Roush Racing teammates – Greg Biffle and Mark Martin. Both had a shot at a top-10 finish but saw their night end in damaged sheet metal with seven laps left.

Biffle bumped J.J. Yeley, sending Biffle sideways before Martin T-boned Biffle's car.

And Jeff Gordon, who led the race four times, was behind them. Wrong place, wrong time. Gordon was poised to move up in the Chase standings. Instead, he falls back to 12th, outside a playoff spot.

"Some guys were complete idiots out there," Gordon said. "I want to bad mouth them but I'm not going to. I don't know if I had a shot at Tony, but I definitely would have finished third or fourth. I got cut short by guys being stupid."

Martin probably felt the same way. Saturday was his last start at Daytona. His stellar Cup career will end without a Cup victory on the 2.5-mile super speedway.

Considering how surprising the rest of the night was, a Martin victory would have fit the pattern. But Stewart made sure the finish wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

Terry Blount writes about national motor sports for The Dallas Morning News.