DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The odds of Trevor Bayne winning last year's Daytona 500 were so long, there weren't any. Bayne was such an unknown, he didn't garner an individual line and instead was lumped together with "the field."

Danica Patrick has never competed in a Sprint Cup race. Never. Yet she's already one step ahead of where Bayne was a year ago. She's got a 60-1 chance to win Sunday's Great American Race, according to online sports book Bovada.

So it's become with the Daytona 500, the biggest crapshoot in sports.

Few outside the NASCAR world had ever heard of Bayne before he won last year's Daytona 500 as a 20-year-old rookie. And most haven't heard of him since, mainly because he didn't crack the top 10 again in 2011.

While the Daytona 500 stands as NASCAR's most prestigious race, it's also its most unpredictable. With the engines of all 43 cars governored to run virtually the same horsepower, winning isn't just about skill, but luck as well. It's an ebb-and-flow event with just

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – A million bucks. That's how much Dale Earnhardt Jr. says he cost his team last year by not winning a race.

One million dollars, 'a lot of coin, even for someone in Junior's tax bracket.

The earnings loss stems from Earnhardt not being a part of NASCAR's "Winner's Circle" program, one of a handful of contingency plans that doles out cash to eligible drivers after every race. To be eligible for the Winner's Circle program, you have to have won a race, something Junior hasn't done since June 2008.

While much has been made of Earnhardt's 129-race winless streak, it apparently goes even deeper than the personal disappointment. According to NASCAR, the most a driver can earn in a season through the program is around $350,000. So considering Junior hasn't been eligible since 2009, that's $700,000, not a million, but still quite significant.

"[My team] could use that money," he said Wednesday at Daytona International Speedway. "There's just so many benefits to getting

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Kasey Kahne will go to a backup car after a wreck during Daytona 500 practice on Wednesday.

Kahne spun out coming off Turn 4 after getting a tap from behind by Juan Pablo Montoya. The tap sent Kahne into the tri-oval grass where the nose was ripped off his No. 5 Chevrolet. His team immediately pulled out the backup car.

"It's hard to point fingers at anyone because everyone is trying to get speed and go, but I didn't spin out by myself," Kahne said. "It's not like he was trying. He was trying to push me and get going; he just hit me in the wrong spot at the wrong time."

This isn't the first incident for Montoya at Speedweeks. After Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout, Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Montoya "just about wrecked the whole field."

Kahne will now start at the back of the field in Thursday's Gatorade Duel 2. And though he's confident in his backup car, it is his last one, meaning an incident in Thursday's race would leave his team scrambling to find a backup

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Hendrick Motorsports is not satisfied with the process that resulted in Jimmie Johnson's Daytona 500 car failing inspection, and if a penalty is handed down – as NASCAR president Mike Helton has intimated – team owner Rick Hendrick would appeal.

At issue is how NASCAR deemed Johnson's car to be "outside of what [its] tolerances are." NASCAR's determination Friday that the "C-posts" (the area under repair in the picture to the right) on Johnson's No. 48 were incorrect came via a visual inspection, not by using a metal template or "claw" placed on top of the car.

This raised a red flag in the Hendrick camp.

"We're confused. We're puzzled," said Ken Howes, Hendrick's vice president of competition. "Most of the time, we're comfortable [with the inspection process]. NASCAR works hard; their officials work hard to make things fair – 99.9 percent of the time it works. And every now and then something happens to confuse you, and here we are."

NASCAR's inspection process

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The danger, safety and skill of NASCAR racing was on full display Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway. Three major wrecks, Jeff Gordon on his roof, nobody hurt, Kyle Busch in victory lane after pulling off not one but two miraculous saves to win the Bud Shootout by a nose.

All this in just 82 laps, so imagine what kind of show we could be in for in next Sunday's 200-lap Daytona 500.

Twice a year, NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series heads to the high banks of Daytona, which gained fame for putting on shows like no other. With engines restricted to run at virtually the same speed, races here set up to be one big 43-car convoy barreling around the 2.5-mile track running inches apart at 200-plus mph.

Or at least it used to be that way.

The pack racing fans had grown to love went on hiatus last year after a repaving of the track generated a phenomenon where two cars ran faster than three, four or 43 bunched together. While safer, drivers railed against it because

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It appears that pack racing is back at Daytona International Speedway and with it, "The Big One."

At least seven cars were involved in a wreck during practice for Saturday night's Bud Shootout. Those involved were Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, AJ Allmendinger, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Keselowski and Allmendinger were forced to go to backup cars.

The incident came 45 minutes into the practice session when Stewart clipped the back of Kurt Busch's No. 51, setting off the minor melee. Prior to the wreck, the cars were traveling in a giant pack, which is a departure from the tandem racing that emerged during last year's Daytona 500.

"I was pushing the 51 car and he had to move a little bit, but I'm still the one pushing him so I'm responsible for it," Stewart explained.

Said Busch: "It was just a deal where Tony was trying to help. And we were just trying to learn the draft and a couple of slow cars were

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – In NASCAR racing, the eternal question is this: Does winning hinge on the car or the driver?

Kurt Busch's bad attitude has presented a chance to finally get an answer.

For most of his 11-year career, Busch has been a championship contender. He won NASCAR's Cup title in 2004 and has collected 24 checkered flags along the way. Talented, sure, but like every other champion and the vast majority of race winners since the early 1990s, Busch did it racing for big-money owners who today are working on $15- to $20-million yearly budgets per car.

NASCAR is, quite explicitly, a "haves" world. Champions come from one of three teams (Hendrick, Gibbs and Roush have won 11 of the past 12 titles; 12 of 12 if you include Tony Stewart's 2011 win driving Hendrick-supplied equipment); race winners come from one of six (Hendrick, Gibbs, Roush, Childress, Stewart-Haas and Penske have won 158 of 180 races run since 2007, or 88 percent).

In 2012, Busch won't be driving for any of them.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Jimmie Johnson has yet to run a single lap in the 2012 season, and already his team is in trouble.

On Friday at Daytona International Speedway, NASCAR discovered a body modification that was "outside of what our tolerances are," according to director of competition John Darby. The "C" post – shown in the picture to the right where the word "Stanley" is printed – was confiscated from Johnson's Daytona 500 car.

"It was an obvious modification that the template inspectors picked up on," explained Darby. "We did some additional inspections and found that they were too far out of tolerance to fix."

No penalties were immediately announced. NASCAR officials said they will wait until after the Feb. 26 Daytona 500 to determine if Johnson and his team will be penalized, with vice president of competition Robin Pemberton saying, "There's always a potential."

(Update: NASCAR president Mike Helton told the Associated Press that a penalty is "highly likely.")

"Not the best way