Daytona 500 is never fair, but Byron’s victory is no fluke

DAYTONA BEACH, Florida — They don’t call it the Fair American Race.

They do not call it the Satisfying American Race, the Predictable American Race or the Tidy American Race. It’s the Great American Race. As in, great at keeping us guessing.

NASCAR‘s biggest single event, which was held for the 66th time on a rain-postponed Monday evening at the self-declared World Center of Racing, can be described by a list of lead characteristics that shifts and shuffles more chaotically than this year’s Daytona 500 pinball machine of a leaderboard that produced 41 lead changes between 20 different drivers, five over the race’s final 20 laps.

But fair? No. Never fair. That’s the nature of a 2.5-mile superspeedway with tight quarters in skyscraper turns, an asphalt beast that has never made much sense to any eyes, be they engineers, spectators or the poor souls who have decided to drive around that monster at 200 mph.

“It’s speedway racing. It’s a lot of fun until it sucks,” declared Joey Logano, who led a race-best 45 laps but ended his night 33rd, wrecked while running third and battling for the lead again with less than ten laps remaining. “It’s usually the guys who start the wreck that survive. That’s the frustrating part.”

The car whose nose found the car that hit Logano? It was in the accordion collision only because another car had hit it when the cars ahead of them started scrambling and forced everyone behind them to suddenly slow down, and was driven William Byron. Byron’s Chevy was popped from behind by teammate Alex Bowman, causing Byron to hit second place Brad Keselowski, who was turned into Logano, who then teamed up to take out 20 other cars behind them. That group included nine of the 20 drivers who had led the race at some point during the day.

When the checkered flag was finally shown nearly 30 minutes later, who was the winner? It was Byron.

See? Not fair.

“You’re trying to make the right decisions, the right calls, to get yourself into position to win the race,” said Jeff Gordon, who won this race twice driving the same No. 24 Chevy that he now helps oversee as chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. “But in this type of racing, when the finish is coming, there isn’t much you can control but to put your foot into the gas and hope that whatever happens — because…