(NASCAR.com)Why do NASCAR shirts have to be so ugly?

There are some good looking NASCAR shirts out there for those of us with discerning tastes, but it sure seems that NASCAR has a larger percentage of hideous fan gear than any other sport does. Of course, with a liberal use of camouflage and red, white and blue (sometimes together), NASCAR already has a head start on every other sport in the ugly category.

And another major subset of that ugly category? The full-screenprint shirt. How people find them appealing is beyond me, but hey, if you're going to announce your support for your favorite driver, you might as well broadcast it as loudly as you can without having to have blinking neon lights draped all over you, right?

Enter the new driver number t-shirts. Damn, they're obnoxious. The numbers on those things could be seen from space. And the words behind the number? That's your favorite driver's name over and over and over and over again. Loud and proud, I guess.

The No. 01 was driven by Charlie Kimball, Juan Pablo Montoya, Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas. (Getty)

The finish of the Daytona Prototype division in the Rolex 24 Grand-Am race at Daytona came down to pit strategy and the dominant car prevailed.

Juan Pablo Montoya pitted from the lead in Chip Ganassi's No. 01 BMW Riley -- the strongest car for much of the race's 24 hours -- with just under seven minutes left and was able to retake the lead and the win just minutes later after Max Angelelli in the No. 10 pitted for fuel.

A caution flag with approximately an hour to go set up the fuel-strategy filled sprint to the finish, as most of the DP cars were just outside their fuel windows. Last year's champion, the No. 60 of Michael Shank Racing that had AJ Allmendinger in the car for the final stint, made it to the finish without having to stop for fuel but was out of contention after being forced off into the grass and a subsequent pit stop to clean the grille.

Allmendinger was aggressive after the final restart, and got to the outside of Joao Barbosa, and Barbosa pushed Allmendinger up as

The 02 car of Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Jamie McMurray and Joey Hand will start second (Getty)

The official start of the 2013 racing season is just a few hours away.

Many NASCAR and IndyCar drivers are competing in this year's Rolex 24, the kick-off to season-opening festivities at Daytona and they're also at the front of the field too.

Chip Ganassi's cars qualified 1-2 in the Daytona Prototype division, with the car of Scott Pruett, Charlie Kimball, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Memo Rojas on the pole and the car driven by Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Jamie McMurray and Joey Hand in second.

AJ Allmendinger, who won last year's race in the DP division in the No. 60 for Michael Shank Racing, starts 6th in the same car. He'll be joined by Marcos Ambrose on that team. (As Geoffrey Miller noted, qualifying for a 24 hour race may be the only qualifying less meaningful than restrictor plate track qualifying.)

Sebastian Bourdais starts seventh, and last year's IndyCar Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay starts 12th in DP.

In GT, defending champion and former NASCAR driver Andy Lally's team

Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (Getty Images)

Big news from the social segment of the world of NASCAR: Danica Patrick is dating fellow 2013 rookie of the year candidate Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Patrick, recently divorced and one of the most famous faces in racing, and Stenhouse, the two-time reigning Nationwide Series champion, are both making their full-time Sprint Cup series debut this season. Patrick races for Stewart-Haas Racing, while Stenhouse runs for Roush-Fenway Racing.

Stenhouse had served as something of a mentor to Patrick during her 2012 season. Speculation had swirled about the couple throughout this past week's NASCAR Media Tour in Charlotte. On Friday, Patrick confirmed to the AP that, indeed, the rumors were true.

''I have a boyfriend, his name is Richard," Patrick said. ''I think I am just finally excited to tell someone about this."

[Related: Sprint Cup Series 2013 Rookie of the Year should be legit]

The reason for keeping the story quiet until now, Patrick said, was to keep the focus on racing during the Media

(Getty)

Ricky Stenhouse, you're an upgrade over Stephen Leicht.

Stenhouse, replacing Matt Kenseth in Roush Fenway Racing's No. 17 car, is the presumptive favorite for the 2013 Rookie of the Year honors and could easily contend for a win or two this season. Leicht, last year's rookie of the year, ran 15 races for Circle Sport Racing and start-and-parked 10 of them.

If we're going on driving ability, Leicht's a worthy nominee; in his only full season in the Nationwide Series in 2007, he won a race and finished seventh in the points standings. And it's not Leicht's fault that the rookie class was essentially nonexistent. But a driver who start and parks a majority of his races should be NASCAR's top series' rookie of the year.

Enter Stenhouse, who is making the move to Cup after two consecutive Nationwide titles and eight wins over those two seasons. His Nationwide career got off to a rocky start as he crashed five times in the first 12 races of 2010 and didn't qualify for the 13th, but team

You can sponsor this man for 13 races. (Getty)

Alright Junior Nation, this is your chance to get your name on your idol's car. Of course, it will cost you millions of dollars, but primary sponsorship of the most popular driver EVAR isn't free. You certainly didn't think that, did you?

Oh, these races are also towards the end of the year. You could be on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car as he goes for his first Sprint Cup title. Historic.

On Wednesday, Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick said that 13 races were available after the summer for Junior's Sprint Cup Series No. 88. They're not worried about filling those races at all, so if you better jump at this opportunity, especially if you present Hendrick with the 'right' deal.

From the Sporting News:

“We’ve got a lot of good opportunities and the way we’re positioned, our car is covered until the end of the summer,” Hendrick said Wednesday during the Sprint Media Tour. “I’m looking for the right deal, not any deal. If I wanted any deal, I would put ‘Hendrick cars’ on it. … I have no

Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick. Definitely driving together in 2014. (Getty)

During the first day of the annual Sprint Cup Series media tour on Monday, Richard Childress affirmed that Kevin Harvick would be moving to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014.

The move was first reported in November of last year, but neither Harvick, Childress or Tony Stewart had said anything in confirmation until Monday evening.

From USA Today:

We had a meeting and he told me his plans and we discussed what we were going to do in '13," Childress said Monday. "He'll do well over there at Stewart-Haas, and RCR will keep going and moving forward.

"I think him and Tony will have a good relationship."

For what it's worth, Harvick said he didn't have anything to unveil about his 2014 plans.

Harvick had talked in December about moving on from RCR, the team he's spent his entire Cup Series career with, at the end of 2013 and said he had reached out to Matt Kenseth for advice on how to handle a similar situation. Early last season, Kenseth announced that he wouldn't be returning to Roush Fenway

(Getty)

Not only does the Sprint Unlimited have a new name (from the Budweiser Shootout) but it could feature some new wrinkles that will be determined by fan voting.

NASCAR and Sprint announced that fan voting through the official NASCAR app for smartphones or via a link on NASCAR.com will determine the race's segment distances, type of pit stop after the first segment and if any cars will be eliminated after the second segment.

The choices for race segments are broken out into 40 laps/20 laps/15 laps, 35/30/10 and 35/20/20. That voting will end on February 13th, the Wednesday before the race.

The voting for pit stops and eliminations will close during the race. For the pit stop after the first segment, fans can vote for no mandatory pit stop, a mandatory (at least) two tire pit stop or a mandatory four tire pit stop. And on the elimination side of things, the options are either no cars eliminated, two, four, or six.

If I was the grand poobah of all of this, I would go with the 35/30/10