Daytona 500 2012 Full Results And Recap: Juan Pablo Montoya’s Crash Steals The Show

Matt Kenseth won Monday night early Tuesday morning’s Daytona 500.

But in 10 years from now – heck, maybe even three or five – Kenseth’s victory itself may be nothing more than an afterthought when discussing the 54th running of the Great American Race.

Sorry, Matt. When a car collides with a jet dryer and ignites an explosion and raging inferno on the track surface, the winner gets overshadowed.

All of the water cooler talk around the country this morning will be about Juan Pablo Montoya’s bizarre, unlikely and unthinkable crash under caution with a vehicle that was trying to dry Turn 3 at Daytona International Speedway.

Just two years after the infamous pothole marred the 2010 Daytona 500, the inferno incident stood to be even worse.

Montoya knew something was wrong with his car, but he wasn’t prepared for it to snap on him and break sharply to the right. It went up the track and nailed the jet dryer with 40 laps to go, causing both vehicles to burst into flames.

Fortunately, both Montoya and the driver of the jet dryer escaped unhurt – but the track did not. More than 200 gallons of burning jet fuel poured down Turn 3 and lit the night sky with flames.

There was concern that the track would be so damaged from the incident that the race would not be restarted. And of all people, underdog Dave Blaney was sitting in the lead at the time – the result of staying out on a pit stop.

Would NASCAR really give the Daytona 500 win to Blaney?

Drivers got out of their cars and anxiously walked around, even trying to walk down and see the damage before NASCAR turned them away. Brad Keselowski even tweeted pictures during the delay, which earned him more than 130,000 new Twitter followers as of early Tuesday morning.

After a two-hour delay to clean and repair the track – safety workers even used boxes of Tide laundry detergent! – the cars were finally ready to finish the race.

But yet another odd sight popped up: Since drivers can’t buckle their own window nets, NASCAR put one crew member from each team on a shuttle bus and drove it from pit road to the backstretch – a mini field trip, of sorts.

The 30-hour delayed start time due to rain, the two-hour fire delay and the funny bus scene all made for memorable moments from this year’s Daytona 500.

Kenseth’s victory, though, won’t top the list.

Here are the full results from the 2012 Daytona 500: