wow ... where did junior come from ... the video of this daytona 500 finish should be added to wikipedia's "from out of nowhere" page ... this was a finish that had many screaming at their big screen after near 7 hours of relative calm

congrats to jamie mcmurray for the win, and to martin truax, jr for his strong 6th place finish ... always good to see guys driving for new teams start well ... also excellent to see earnhardt-ganassi (mcmurray 1st & montoya 10th), michael waltrip (reutimann 5th & truax, jr 6th) and richard childress (bowyer 3rd, harvick 7th & burton 11th) cars run strong all day and finish well ... petty motorsports entrants (sadler 24th, kahne 30th and almendinger 32nd) ran very strong most of the afternoon but only menard finished well ... the disappointments would have to be hendricks motorsports (martin 12th, gordon 26th & johnson 35th) ... and stewart-haas with hendricks engines (stewart 22nd & newman 34th) ... the exception, of course, would be hendricks' dale earnhardt, jr ... his 2nd place finish would have been a win if this race had been 1/2 mile longer ... jr took the white flag (1 lap to go) in 7th place ... but once he blew through clint bowyer (2nd high side) and greg biffle (3rd low side) like an nfl running back pounding the ball up the middle, and had mcmurray in his sights ... it was only a matter of time before jr made one of his familiar winning moves to the high side ... but time ran out

yesterday, i asked if this race could possibly live up to expectations after 2 weeks of excellent competition at daytona ... the racing sure did ... thank you nascar for bigger holes in the plates and for firing the bump drafting police ... the race, not so much ... but rather than remembering potholes and hours of red flag racing ... i will remember 21 different leaders, the absence of a "big one" and an electrifying finish to a full 500 miles of racing thanks to dale earnhardt, jr

watch nascar's sights and sounds of daytona here ... watch and listen to race chatter here

pool standings after week #1 <> daytona 500

• jason -- 190 points
• tom -- 190 points
• justin* -- 175 (-15)
• floyd -- 170 (-20)
• jim -- 156 (-34)
• robin -- 156 (-34)
• rich -- 96 (-94)
• kevin -- 84 (-106)
• candy* -- 78 (-112)
• scott* -- 0 (-190)

* denotes rookie competitor ... welcome candy, justin and scott!

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nascar 2010 pool picks for week #1 <> daytona 500 from daytona international speedway (for most points <> for race win)

• jim -- kevin harvick (29) <> tony stewart (14)
• tom -- jamie mcmurray (1) <> tony stewart (14)
• jason -- jamie mcmurray (1) <> tony stewart (14)
• robin -- kevin harvick (29) <> tony stewart (14)
• floyd -- greg biffle (16) <> dale earnhardt, jr (88)
• kevin -- robby gordon (7) <> tony stewart (14)
• rich -- elliott sadler (19) <> kyle busch (18)
• justin -- dale earnhardt, jr (88) <> mark martin (5)
• candy -- kasey kahne (9) <> tony stewart (14)