Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. When the Blob pointed out the other day how often the Daytona 500 gets won by outliers, it didn't mean THIS much of an outlier.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.?
He's so random I didn't even mention him.
In fact, if you shot me up with truth serum, I'd tell you I wasn't aware he was even still in the Cup series anymore.
But there he was at the end, getting the requisite push at the requisite time while everyone crashed behind him. The yellow came out, the checkers dipped, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won Daytona after a record 212 laps.
It was a record 212 laps because, as usual, the best stock-car drivers in the world couldn't get through the last 10 laps without running into each other. Then couldn't get through the first green-white-checker without running into each other. And then they couldn't get through the second and final green-white-checker without running into each other, which is how Stenhouse won under yellow.
This is what happens in restrictor plate racing, as we all should know by now. It turns events like the Daytona 500 into the Wheel of Fortune, and why the most prolific winner in the race's history might just be Random Guy.
Sometimes Random Guy is named Derrike Cope, whose 1990 Daytona 500 win was one of only two career wins in 429 Cup races. And sometimes he's named Michael McDowell, whose only Cup win, also in 429 starts, is the 2021 Daytona 500, which he won because Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski wrecked each other on the last lap.
Stenhouse, however, might out-Random both of them.
Until last night, he hadn't won a Cup race in five years, which encompasses 199 starts. He lost his ride with Roush Fenway Racing in 2019, and was picked up by tiny JTG Daugherty racing, co-owned by former NBA star (and one-time NASCAR analyst) Brad Daugherty. Stenhouse was the team's only entry in the 500.
But their luck was in this day. Stenhouse shuffled his way up front from 31st on the grid, managed to hang around up there, and got the jump on the last two restarts to win a race that saw Keselowski lead the most laps (42), polesitter Alex Bowman notch the first top-five finish for a Daytona 500 polesitter in 22 years, and 52 lead changes among 21 drivers.
Just about everyone loves this sort of Cinderella story, so just about everyone Stenhouse beat was happy for him. One of the only ones who wasn't was, big surprise, the chronically uncharitable Kyle Busch, who pointed out he'd have won his first Daytona 500 in 18 tries without the stupid green-white-checker overtimes, because he was leading at the 200-lap mark.
"Just par for the course," he groused after getting caught up in the second-overtime crash and finishing 19th. "Just used to it and come down here every year to just find out when and where I was going to crash and what lap I come to the care center. Who won? I don't even know who lucked into it."
It was Random Guy, Kyle, aka Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Which, as you oughta know by now, is just how it works at Daytona a lot of years on the third Sunday in February.
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