I have long held the belief that the real power in the universe is chaos and its ensuing madness. Since man first banged rocks together and created fire, humans have been on a mission to enforce order and have always failed. We build walls that crumble, we write laws that become outdated, and no matter what we do to establish the myth of "order," chaos breaks down our walls and outflanks our laws. In racing's "clean air is king" world, chaos is the ultimate power and the recent events at Daytona represented this perfectly.
Chaos was the weather! NASCAR had the races scheduled for months because that's the order of things. It took a handful thunderstorms to totally disrupt all the events, delaying the Xfinity race by three hours and the Cup show by a whole day, yea, chaos!
As the events continued, we tried to push back against nature on Sunday. Good luck with that. By the way, Mother Nature was mad this past weekend, with floods in the Midwest and California shaking like Jello, while in Daytona, it was pedestrian storms that attacked the order of things. Let's dry the track, look at our shiny technology we're bringing order to things, oh wait there is lightning and it's rainy again. Score one for chaos. I know you're not buying this, just hang with me.
Finally, the red flag is waved again. It should be called the chaos flag. The top teams pitted because that's what the book says; unfortunately for them, chaos never read the book. Then we find out that Justin Haley is the leader and will eventually be declared the winner. In what universe is that possible? Spire Motorsports is really more of a marketing project designed to take advantage of the charter system than a race team. In a universe ruled by chaos, this is how events unfold. The usual suspects found their cars in a heap of madness, a crowning achievement to disorder.
In the movie Jurassic Park, the character of Ian Malcolm, (played by Jeff Goldblum) says the park will fail because of the theory of chaos. Well, next thing you know, you're hiding from velociraptors and Justin Haley in his third start is winning Daytona. All man-made systems and constructs favor those with power and influence but that power had the strength of fog compared to the omnipresence of chaos.
The writer William Butler Yeats wrote, "And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last Slouches toward Bethlehem." The beast is chaos and it's never hurried because, in the end, it will be victorious. People like myself embrace our faith to shield us from the chaos but it doesn't eliminate it. Up next, NASCAR heads to Kentucky Speedway where they hope some semblance of order — whatever that is — will be restored. It most likely will be but the little demon that is chaos will be peaking over the turn three wall, awaiting its moment to once again seize the day.