DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- On Sunday night, in the aftermath of one of the most bizarre, and at the same time most thrilling Daytona 500s in years, Michael Waltrip's self-owned race car had barely stopped rolling and he was out of the car -- and the Sprint Cup garage area.
It looked like the act of a man who knew he'd be back, and not just as the owner of a couple Sprint Cup teams, co-owner of a Nationwide team fielding one of the hottest young talents in the sport and a burgeoning business and entertainment entity.
And soon after, both Waltrip and his operations manager who was his crew chief for this Daytona 500, Bobby Kennedy, confirmed it was true.
"We had a good week and it was enjoyable," Kennedy said. "We just threw a group of guys together and come down here -- we didn't have a set crew, just pulled a bunch of guys from the shop and it went good.
"You never know, you might see us again next year."
Waltrip's hasty exit beat a lot of other people's arrival at his car, but he briefly spoke about the future. "It's not my last one, I don't think," Waltrip said.
As disgusted as he was with the 18th-place finish in the race that in many corners was thought to possibly be the last time Waltrip -- a two-time Daytona 500 winner -- would appear in the Great American Race, he should've been inside out at the performance of his two full-time drivers.
With two laps remaining in the race that Waltrip says "defines his career," his newest driver, Martin Truex Jr., was leading. Then, Truex got shoehorned by 2007 Daytona 500 winner Kevin Harvick and made a miraculous save. You could almost say he was never as proud of a sixth-place finish
"Restarts were wild, I can tell you that," Truex said grinning widely. "I had a lot of fun out there [Sunday]. Proud of the team -- our pit stops were amazing. For our first race together I would say it was an A-plus-plus. I just had a lot of fun."
Even when Harvick hooked him, took him out of his way and wouldn't let go. Not surprisingly, Truex -- a racer's racer -- laughed and said he "would have done the same thing" to win the Daytona 500.
"I came about a half-inch from wrecking. Harvick was pushing me and I knew he wasn't going to push me to the win," Truex said. "He was doing what he had to do to win. I felt him pull off of my bumper and I tried to block, but I couldn't get there quick enough. He had me hooked and turning me and turning me and turning me. I just couldn't quite get down in front of him. He was just kind of holding me there.
"It was what I expected -- a lot of torn-up cars, a whole lot of fun and I'm sure the fans got their money's worth."
Imagine the delight of his teammate David Reutimann, who had scrambled and line-jumped all day and on the second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, ended up in fifth place -- his best
Daytona result in seven career Cup starts at his home-state track.
"Those restarts were just killing us toward the end and we couldn't do anything right and I couldn't get in the right line and things kept getting messed up," Reutimann said. "Thankfully we got where we needed to be when it counted and it ended up working out pretty well.
There has to be a flip side to every coin and so it was for Waltrip. The final green-white-checkered resulted in Waltrip losing what seemed a sure top-15 finish.
"We were a little off at the start, but we worked on it and got it pretty good," Kennedy said. "The mid-point of the race we decided 'surely there's going to be a big wreck,' so we decided to just lay back. And then, with seven to go, he started to take off and got up to 13th, and somewhere on the backstretch somebody got into him, so...So it was 18th. But the bottom line, it's got the whole organization licking its chops at the prospect of Auto Club Speedway this weekend.
"It was so cool to see Martin and David up there battling," Waltrip said. "It's just really a proud accomplishment. David did a great job there at the end and Martin looked like he could win the race. We really feel like what we've learned in the offseason tells us that next week should be fun as well with our testing and what our boys have done and learned."
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