fans pales in comparison. Enough people have commented on the obvious here;
all I'll add are some nuances from my limited experience watching NASCAR
(since the baseball strike):
He was second in the points last year... Many stock car drivers are
competitive well into their forties.
Dale Earnhardt raced at Daytona and Talladega the safest way possible - get
to the front fast and stay there. The restrictor plates bunch the cars up
into a huge pack, and one mistake by anyone and you have the Tony Stewart
type wreck taking out a good chunk of the field. The front is the safest
spot to try to avoid "the big one" because you have more of a chance of the
wreck starting behind you.
I haven't ever heard one single driver say that they LIKED restrictor plate
racing. Sure, they like Daytona for the prestige, history and buildup of
speedweeks, but the actual racing? E would comment that "it ain't real
racin'." I remember hearing Mark Martin at Talladega after one race say
"I'd rather take a beating than have to run a plate race... if we did this
more than four times a year, I'd have to find a new line of work." He made
those comments in victory circle after WINNING the race.
Crashes in the plate races are pretty much random... the best you can do is
try to be in the front... I'm going to go back to mourning now,
David