Who Is Dave Blaney, And Could He Really Win The 2012 Daytona 500?

As NASCAR’s biggest race remains under the red flag with 40 laps remaining, Dave Blaney is in position to pull off one of the most bizarre upsets of all time.

If you’re a non-NASCAR fan and have never heard of Blaney, don’t worry. Heck, even some race fans haven’t heard of him.

Blaney is a journeyman driver for Tommy Baldwin Racing – a small, underfunded team – and has never won a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in 397 career starts.

That the 49-year-old “Buckeye Bullet” would find himself in position to win the Daytona 500 is pure circumstance. His team ordered him to stay out on the most recent pit stop, and Juan Pablo Montoya suddenly had something break on his car and collided with a jet dryer, blowing it up.

An inferno erupted at the scene in Turn 3 as jet fuel leaked all over the track, and there’s a real concern the race may not be restarted.

Last year, SB Nation asked Blaney how he’d like to be remembered when his career is over someday.

“That doesn’t matter to me, really,” he said then. “I don’t know; it’s not up to me to decide what (the retirement story) says, I guess. It’ll be whatever it should be; what I’ve earned and what I’ve deserved.”

In this case, though, a Daytona 500 win would be viewed as unearned. The way the race has turned out is simply too bizarre for words.

Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of NASCAR. And the night isn’t over yet.