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Daytona 500
Ummm. Has Tony Stewart lost his mind? I don’t ask that question lightly, because that’s how he was driving in the Daytona 500 today. He had several paranoid incidents, seeming to believe that every wiggle or wobble by another car was an attempt to take him out of the race. He cost himself and at least a couple of other drivers a chance to win by brushing and bumping in retaliation for things nobody else saw.

He made a pretty dicey lunge toward eventual winner Jimmie Johnson early in the race. Later he ran himself and Jeff Gordon into the wall, and near the end he and Kyle Busch scraped each other’s side panels. Oddly (or perhaps not), Johnson, Gordon and Busch are Hendrick Motorsports teammates. The weirdest aspect of all this is that a week ago it was Tony Stewart complaining about Kyle Busch’s aggressive driving, causing NASCAR officials to tighten up enforcement of such tactics (which resulted in penalties today to Stewart himself, among others).

Midway through the race, Stewart fishtailed halfway across the track to run Matt Kenseth into the infield, where Kenseth spun around and hit the outside wall. That move could have taken eight or ten other drivers out of the race, but somehow they managed to avoid Kenseth’s car.

Whatever was eating at Stewart, who after all is the defending series champion, remains a mystery to anyone watching. He won a lot of good will last year for the way he handled himself on the way to the title, but he seemed determined to squander it all today. It’s hard to win a championship without some help from your friends. In fact, you can’t win a race without a little help, so you’d think Stewart would drive more sensibly in the first race of the season.

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