Sprint Unlimited recap: 2015 NASCAR season begins where 2014 left off

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A dramatic finish. Tempers spilling over. Heated words on pit road. Vows of retribution. Add everything together and it was as if Sprint Unlimited was just a continuation of last season instead of the opening 2015 salvo.

This time the featured combatants were Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano, and the events didn’t come as a byproduct of the Chase for the Sprint Cup pressure cooker, but in an exhibition race Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway.

If there were any surprises, it’s that anyone was surprised at what materialized. These kinds of events happen regularly in races without points and only pride and bragging rights mattering. Add in the chaotic nature of restrictor plate, where cars bounce off one another with the same frequency as one sees on a short track, and it was a near foregone conclusion someone or something would combust.

In this instance it was Harvick as the aggressor, offended because he felt Logano pushed him up the track into the wall. The contact cut a right-front tire on the No. 4 car and when the race ended Harvick walked over to Logano and voiced his displeasure, as Harvick is wont to do.

“You can’t just drive somebody in the fence,” Harvick said. “Whether it is an all-star race or not, it doesn’t really matter -- you can’t just take your head off and throw it on the floor board and not use your brain.”

Said Logano: “It is just Kevin. He is an instigator. It is the same thing he is every other time he talks to someone. It is the same old crap, no big deal.”

Yet amid the profusion of multi-car crashes, a garage full of mangled machinery and amid the savagery of a race where three-fourths of the field was collected in one of four big wrecks, stood a winner who knew how everything would emerge.

Because if anyone understands how explosive races are at Daytona it would be Matt Kenseth, a two-time Daytona 500 winner.

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Kenseth, who led 21 laps to score his first win in the preseason opener. That’s what happens every year.

“I’ve seen a lot of plate races the last 15 years. More end up like that than don’t, especially the first race of the year it seems like.”

Although the events may have carried an air of familiarity Saturday night, there was one stunning development amid the madness. Unlike a year ago when he was seemingly the nucleus of every controversy, Brad Keselowski was not involved in any of the extracurricular activities.

Other than that, it was business as usual for NASCAR. If the objective was to carry over the momentum from last season into the new campaign, then the Unlimited achieved the goal.

In Victory Lane was a popular winner, while on pit road two likely championship contenders nearly came to blows in an encounter SportsCenter will surely replay. And it all serves as a lead-in to the centerpiece of Speedweeks, the Daytona 500; a race featuring Jeff Gordon’s emotional final start and where the defending champion is none other than Dale Earnhardt Jr.

“If the start tonight was a hint for the rest of the season, it’s on like Donkey Kong,” Tony Stewart wrote on his Twitter page.”

And as if a reminder was needed, NASCAR sent a reverberating message Saturday night: It’s back.