Drop the flag

By DAVID GREEN

I'm thinking Carly Simon this morning. You know, "Anticipation." Not in the depths the eloquent songwriter probed in her lyrics, but in a manner similar to the ketchup commercial that used the song as musical background -- the "keepin' me waitin'" line.

Keepin' me waitin', until 1 p.m. Central, that is.

For the first time in a long time, it feels as if the start of the racing season is overdue. As much as I have for so many years been wired up for the start of a new season, it has been a long time since I felt so ready and so anticipatory.

Junking the January testing at Daytona, I think, helped this feeling. (I suspect it may also encourage a more interesting 500, but that's getting off the subject.) It wasn't only the overstuffed size of the Cup Series schedule; it was the absence of any real off-season between the 36th race of one season and the beginning of Speedweeks the next year.

The tumultuous news of the past late November and all of December and January was really and truly "off track" in a way it hasn't been in awhile, if ever. It mandated that you either ignore it or get completely out of your comfortable rut to consider it in depth.

And now, having gone through that exercise (exploring, not ignoring), I am more than ready for today's Daytona 500.

Storylines are plentiful -- the strong qualifying run by Bill Elliott in the beloved Wood Brothers No. 21, the success and the tribulations of Stewart-Haas Racing (and Smoke's warm and cuddly Valentine's Day messages to Goodyear), the landscape-altering absence of the traditional Petty Enterprises and a driver with the Petty name in the field, Mark Martin on the front row in his 25th start in the event he has never won...

It seems to me that much, or at least some, of the instability of the cars has been addressed since the wild and wooly Budweiser Shootout. The product that I've seen so far has been quite entertaining.

Who'll win? Heck, I have no idea.

Whom do I want to win? Well, being an old-timer myself, I'd be pleased to see a greybeard such as Martin or Elliott win it; I'm friends from way back with crew chiefs Donnie Wingo and Steve Addington, so I couldn't unhappy if either of their drivers happened to take the flag; it would be fitting if the two great drivers of their era, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, were to win (Stewart for the first time); it would be equally fitting if one of the trio that seem to be emerging as the definition of the next era (Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch) were to win.

I guess, when you turn all that into statistics of some sort, I have two plugs for Kyle Busch (Addington being his crew chief), so maybe that's a prediction in itself.

To paraphrase Carly Simon again, "I'm no prophet and I don't know" what the day holds. But "I'll stay right here (in front of the TV screen) 'cause these are the good old days."