Only one thing really matters from yesterday’s Daytona 500, and that’s that Ryan Newman is alive and will remain alive. We don’t know much besides that as far as his condition goes, and that’s ok—we can wait for updates, and we can keep hoping he makes a full recovery from whatever injuries he’s sustained, and we can continue thinking of and praying for and expressing support to him, his family, his friends, and his fans. We will continue to do all these things, no matter our level of investment in NASCAR, because when a human life is in the balance, the rest is unimportant.
Since this has taken a serious turn, which is unusual in our NASCAR coverage (and on this site as a whole), and since this might find its way into the hands of someone questioning what an NIT blogger is doing writing about NASCAR, here’s a little disclosure, to hopefully avoid giving anyone any wrong impressions:
- I know very little about NASCAR.
- I love NASCAR, but I don’t really follow it.
- I try to follow NASCAR most seasons, and usually lose track sometime early in baseball season.
- While 60%-ish of this website is of questionable seriousness, and we refuse to explicitly say which 60%, these bullet points are entirely truthful. We are not trying to make fun of NASCAR, or any sport/competition/team/athlete we blog about, by blogging about it/them/him/her. Sometimes we might think it’s funny to blog about things, especially things we know nothing about (see: Burnley F.C.), but we aim to blog about those things in a manner such that fans of the thing we’re blogging about either laugh with us or give a quizzical look and walk away.
Now, the race recap:
To explain how we got to a point in which Ryan Newman’s life was hanging in the balance, we should back up into the last few laps of the race. In a sequence of events not uncommon in races at large speedways (Daytona and Talladega, most notably), the end of the race turned into a series of caution flags and restarts, the last of which was a green-white-checkered restart, in which barring another caution flag, the race was effectively in a two-lap overtime. After the white flag, on the final lap, Denny Hamlin, Newman, and Ryan Blaney were the leaders. Newman and Blaney passed Hamlin heading into turn three. Coming out of turn four, Blaney tried to pass Newman on the low side. Newman slid down to block. Their bumpers got hooked. Newman’s car went sideways, then went airborne, then was t-boned while upside down—directly where Newman was sitting—by Corey LaJoie (who had no way of avoiding the collision, in case you had any doubt—this was no individual’s fault), then slid a long way on its roof, accompanied by quite a few flames. Eventually, emergency crews got Newman’s car onto its wheels, got him out of the car, and got him to the hospital, where after something like two hours, it was announced that while he was in serious condition, his injuries were not life-threatening.
Compared to that, this does not matter, but while Newman’s accident was happening, Hamlin managed to get past Blaney at the finish line by a very narrow margin, winning his third Daytona 500.
If you were only interested in what happened to Newman, that’s what happened. If you’d also like to know what the result of the race means for the NASCAR season, here’s what to know:
- With the victory, Denny Hamlin is already locked into the playoffs. This isn’t surprising. He’s one of the most successful drivers in the sport right now. It’s also a major milestone in his career, since winning the Daytona 500 is arguably of the same level of notability as winning a championship, and he’s now won three.
- It was a narrow miss for Ryan Blaney, an up-and-comer from a racing family who’s made the playoffs the last few years but isn’t, by my impression, consistently good enough that he’s a sure bet to make the playoffs this year.
- It’s so early in the season that no other results are really notable. And again, Ryan Newman’s health supersedes all of this in terms of importance.
If you’re among the readers asking whether there’ll there be more NASCAR recaps on The Barking Crow this year, we don’t know. We recognize that we’re the only source of NASCAR news for some of you, or at least the primary source, so as such, we’ll at least let you know when we know more about Newman’s health. Beyond that, no promises.
