by Darrell Waltrip

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The Firecracker/Pepsi 400 was an exciting race. I was happy for Jamie McMurray and crew chief Larry Carter, my old buddy. It was good to see them eek out that win. I did the DirecTV HotPass, and Tony Stewart was my driver. Of course, you know what happened to him. He didn't last too long. We switched over to Kevin Harvick, who was our backup driver. He didn't last too long, either.

We ended up following the No. 18 car at the end of the race, and at one point, I was getting excited for J.J. Yeley. On a long run, it looked like he had a car that could get the job done. He was moving through the field and got all the way up to 5th, but it didn't look like he had a very good car on the short run. He ended up 20th.

Doing the HotPass telecast was interesting. I was following Stewart, and you call the race like a No. 20 fan. I was able to talk with Tony after he and Denny Hamlin crashed, and I got some of his insight. After talking with Tony for a little while, all of the sudden, it clicked that the same thing happened to him in February.

In the Daytona 500, he was coming off of Turn 4, got a little loose and probably got out of the throttle a little bit. Kurt Busch took himself and Tony out of the race. I think Tony started to recall that incident. It was obvious, watching him on camera, that some of his anger had diminished.

Drivers are that way. You just can't help it. After the race, Kyle Busch talked about how he felt his team abandoned him. I guarantee you on Monday — after he looked at the tape and thought about it — he probably regretted some of the things that he said. But that's just the emotion of our sport.

Drivers get caught up in the moment, and we can't help ourselves. Things come out of our mouths, and certainly, those words are formulated in our brains so it's not like we don't think about them. But, a lot of times, we don't realize how many people are going to be affected by what we say.

It was an emotional weekend, starting on Friday with qualifying being rained out. It was unbelievable to see that happen to my brother and others in good race cars, like Boris Said. Certainly for an impound race, the go-or-go-home drivers are going to have a better chance of qualifying than they would during a normal weekend. They can do things to their car that the teams in the top 35 don't have to do. Their opportunity to make the field was taken away by Mother Nature.

It's not a rules or a NASCAR problem. I've seen qualifying canceled when there were two cars left to go on the line. That's the rule, and that's the way it's always been. Every time something happens, we don't need to have a kneejerk reaction to change the rules. Most of the rules have served us very well for a number of years.

In today's world, teams and NASCAR look at trends. Over the years, how many times have we been affected by weather or by whatever rule may be enforced that we don't like? That's how we got the Chase for the Nextel Cup. One guy one year stunk up the show and won the championship before we got to the end of the season. Then, everybody said, "We've got to do something about that." And they did. That's how we got the Chase so you've got to be careful what you wish for.

Believe it or not, I try to be objective as much as I can. In this case, a rule — that we've always had — was applied, and everybody knew what it was. There was disappointment, but no surprises.

Speaking of disappointment, certainly that came in the form of a news report on Tuesday morning. After my wife Stevie's birthday on Saturday, the girls and I stayed in Daytona for a few extra days. Frank and Pat Peek have a condo that they were gracious enough to let us use. On Tuesday, I was having coffee in the condo and looking at the newspaper. All of the sudden, there was a TV report about a plane crash near Orlando. The first pictures were devastating as the crash demolished homes.

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I really started to watch with interest when they said the plane belonged to NASCAR and Bill France Jr. I knew that airplane. I believe it was the plane that Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. had used through the years. It got me worried that I knew somebody on the plane.

Shortly thereafter, they said it was Dr. Bruce Kennedy, and I thought that I was going to pass out. Stevie screamed. We embraced and held on to each other. We prayed immediately for his wife Lesa, their son Ben and the entire France family that had just gone through the death of Bill Jr. After going through the devastation of losing a father, Lesa lost her husband, and Ben lost his dad. Certainly, the description of what happened to the people on the ground was horrific.

I sat in front of the TV for six consecutive hours, watching the coverage, listening to the reports and praying for all of the families involved. We knew some had been killed and seriously injured. Theres nothing you can do except pray so that's what Stevie and I did. We just sat there for a long time and prayed for the little kids in the houses, the moms and dads, the France family, the Kennedy family and the family of Michael Klemm, who I also knew and who had been in NASCAR for years. We were just considering the unbelievable impact of the crash and the number of people that were affected by it.

It's another blow to our NASCAR family. It's an incredible loss, not just for Lesa and Ben, but for all of those families affected on the ground. All I can say is my heart hurts. Stevie and I have known Lesa since she was a little girl. She's intelligent and sweet. She and Bruce were a perfect match with his quiet demeanor, wisdom and strength. He was involved in everything that Lesa had done. A lot of Lesa's strength, wisdom and confidence came from having a husband like Bruce.

He was a quiet man, but he was also a man of great strength and integrity. I'd chat with him occasionally, and it was always interesting to talk to him because he had a perspective that was a little bit different than mine. That's what made him and Lesa such a great team. It was a good mix of her vision of the sport and his perspective of someone that hadn't grown up in the sport, like many of us have.

I'm sad for Lesa and Ben. I'm sad for those families on the ground. All we can do is pray and pray and pray.