by Darrell Waltrip

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I loved the end of that race. It was so cool with four lead changes in the last nine laps! The only way it could have been better is if Larry McReynolds had been working on my car, and he and I were in victory lane being interviewed by Mike Joy. Jeff Gordon was calm and cool before he got out of his car, but it doesn't matter how good you are or how many races you've won, you always are amazed when you win the Daytona 500.

It's a great start for Gordon's drive for five championships, and if you're going to win a fifth title, you might as well start it off right with your third Great American Race. That 24 car runs so well when it's got those flames on it. Those are pretty flames. During Speedweeks, Gordon had a fast race car, probably the fastest car in practice, and he showed it at the end of the race.

Gordon was the only driver who tried to pass the 20 car before Dale Earnhardt Jr. passed Tony Stewart with five laps to go. Sometimes you get up front, and you get comfortable. You think you've got him covered, and man, they turn up the heat.

Frustrating finish

We've said it all along. You're a sitting duck when you're out front, and the 8 car could suck up to you because he's got a draft on you. When he came off of Turn 2, he had such a run that Stewart had to figure out if he could block him or not. All day, drivers could get even with leader Stewart but couldn't make the pass until Earnhardt Jr. showed the way and closed the door. Stewart was stuck to the bottom and had no time to move around.

On the last lap, Stewart went to the outside and made a big run. He went up the hill and got blocked behind Jimmie Johnson. Then I thought they were going to wreck down the frontstretch, but they held on and raced back to the line. Mark Martin pushed Scott Riggs ahead of Johnson. Stewart was upset and frustrated, and he had every reason to be. You run 500 miles without a scratch on your car, and then you decide to beat them up after the race is over.

Can you imagine leading the most laps with the best car all day and getting shoved back to seventh? My heart goes out to Stewart, especially after making one of the all-time great saves in Saturday's Busch race.

Oh, by the way...

Speeding tickets: Several drivers were assessed drive-through penalties for speeding on pit road, and no, they couldn't order cheeseburgers. In the past, NASCAR has monitored speeds with stopwatches. The lines that you see up and down pit road are the timing lines, and the driver only has his tachometer. He can only get a reading when he's behind the pace car before the race starts. It's not really an exact science so it wasn't a surprise to see so many cars penalized.

Budweiser hot seat: Earnhardt Jr.'s new crew chief, Pete Rondeau, sat on a hot toolbox with ice water running through his veins. If someone gave you that job, you would expect to come down to Daytona and be pretty successful your first time out. You're coming in with a stacked deck.

Sly fox: I believe I'm going to start calling Dale Jr. "The Silver Fox" because he laid back there like David Pearson. I'll just call him a Fox. Stewart was trying to hug the bottom so hard that he bogged down his car a little bit, and Dale Jr. got a run on him, a lot like my brother Michael did to Junior in their Duel 150.

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Wreck report: The fourth turn is mean. Scott Wimmer was spinning around like a water spout. He got up on his nose before coming back down on his wheels. I can't tell you what a crash like that does to you. You just pray that when you stop you can remember what happened. That crash knocked the fire out of John Andretti's car, too, bending his steering wheel.

Then on the next-to-last restart, Mike Skinner was running 10th before a chain reaction ended a great day. It's no different than being on the highway and somebody in front of you starts to go then stops. It's like sitting at a stop light. You start to go and then try to stop before running into the guy in front of you.

End of an era: Rusty Wallace was lucky on the last two cautions, and Mark Martin was lucky on the last one. It would have been ironic if they ran first and second because neither one of them has ever won the Daytona 500. But they had to settle for sixth- and 10th-place finishes respectively.

In the end, a great beginning: This is such a great way to start the year. NASCAR starts the season with the Super Bowl. It's the biggest race we've got. Bill France had a vision in 1959 when he built the Daytona International Speedway, which has grown to seat 200,000 people and hosts the kind of racing that we saw there on Sunday. What a visionary! What a kickoff to '05!