DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Fifty-two lead changes among 21 drivers. Only three in-race cautions over the race's first 198 laps and then three more over the final 13 laps, 10 run in overtime. A Daytona 500 winner who didn't take the lead until that OT and then pulled into Victory Lane for the first time in more than five and a half years.
It all reads like an unlikely confluence of racing events. A once-in-a-lifetime Halley's Comet sort of sighting. A NASCAR unicorn. But it is none of the above. Not at Daytona. Not in stock car racing's biggest race run on its biggest roulette wheel.