Kurt Busch and Jamie McMurray Win NASCAR Pairs Championship

Did you happen to see the Bud Shootout last night from Daytona Beach, FL?  Or as Andy Levy put it, the "Pairs Championship"?  Strange race.

Apparently the combination of a new Sprint Cup car design and the completely repaved Daytona track resulted in a situation in which two cars, seemingly glued together, is the fastest possible combination.  Instead of long lines of cars running single file, or the big wads of cars in three-wide packs, you had pairs of cars running together with quite a bit of passing, but not a lot of position changing between the members of each pair.  If you became disconnected from your dancing partner, you had better find a new one quick.  Single cars fell back through the field like a rock down a well.

The field started with 24 cars, but at least one never had a partner all night.  Because Derrick Cope won the 500 in 1990 when Dale Earnhardt had car trouble on the last lap, he gets a free pass in the Shootout each year.  His car clearly was not up to the standards of the others, and all night he looked like the minute hand as the other cars played the part of the second hand and swept by him every few laps.

The race was won by Kurt Busch in the 22 Pennzoil Car, after he was pushed for pretty much the entire second 50 lap segment by Jamie McMurray in the 1 Bass Pro Shops car.  I don't think the two were ever separated and Jamie never led the pair.  His car was clearly faster, but if he had jumped to the front Busch would have fallen away and McMurray would have fallen with him.

This certainly didn't look like any Daytona race...or for that matter ANY race...I've seen before.  I can't imagine what 500 miles of this kind of racing will look like next Sunday.