DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Much of what lives on from last Sunday in Kentucky for Jimmie Johnson is the disappointment of a lost opportunity.

A win that looked certain one lap, gone the next. The frustration of another late race restart that he felt he was wronged on. Perhaps lost in the shuffle was that Johnson railed after his spin to finish ninth, another comeback for a driver and team who have shown time and time again, they’re might be down but never out.

Since his NSCS debut, Johnson has made a living doing what many would deem the impossible. Winning five-straight championships. Four All-Star race wins. The harder one looks, the more accolades and accomplishments that could be pulled out.

However, when it comes to the racing, the grit and grime of the profession, Johnson excels when the pressures on. Whether it’s holding off Jeff Gordon at Martinsville, dominating the Monster Mile or simple cruising at Pocono, he’s one of the masters of his profession.

“At times all drivers can be their own worst enemy. I feel like that one in Kentucky is definitely on me,” Johnson said Thursday in Daytona.

“I’m the guy behind the wheel at the controls. We went down into turn one and I’m not exactly sure, I haven’t seen the video, but we were three-wide going in the corner. The air affected my car and I got turned around. If I didn’t spin there I really feel like regardless of the restart not being a pretty one for whatever reason, I still had a very good opportunity to win the race.”

When Johnson spun out by himself his chance at a third victory in 2013 disappeared into the smoke emanating from his tires. Crew chief Chad Knaus hoped they’d escape the day with a top-15 finish and move on. There were less than 20 laps left at that point and even with four fresh tires, Johnson was mired back in traffic.

The champion had other ideas, furiously charging through the field and making his way to ninth at the checkered flag. Add another chapter in the book of Johnson improbable comebacks.

He overcame a blown tire at Indianapolis in 2006 to win his first of what is now four Brickyard 400s. There was Pocono in 2009 when a faltering engine resulted in losing three laps.

A rash of cautions with 50 laps to go though enabled Johnson to get all of those laps back and make a charge. Sitting 36th with 40 laps to go, he finished 13th.

Even better, how about Kansas last season when he salvaged his Chase efforts after a crash that damaged the rear end of his Lowe’s Chevrolet? With the decklid smashed in and Knaus calling for Johnson to head to the garage, he instead pulled into his pit stall for his team to assess the damage.

After beating and banging their way around the spoiler they sent him back on track, still on the lead lap. A ninth place finish kept his Chase deficit to just seven points, the same it had been when he entered the day.

Now back to Kentucky. For as angry as Johnson and company were, the finish helped heal some of the open wound. He remains the point leader entering Daytona; where he opened the season with his second win in the Great American Race.

He doesn’t get back a lost win or the potential Chase bonus points he gave away, but he does have the mentality to continue on through adversity.

“I rarely leave the track and not go home in deep thought thinking about what I could have done differently,” said Johnson.

“They sting a bit more when you lead all those laps and don’t leave with the trophy there is no doubt. But I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to shrug that stuff off, focus on what is important and what I can learn from and then go to the next race.”

This weekend, the NASCAR tour heads to the famed Daytona International Speedway for the second and final visit to the racetrack of 2013.

No, this race is not as immense as the first visit – the Daytona 500. There will be no mega TV ratings for this weekend, no hefty crowds that rival February, and the Danica hype will certainly be nowhere near the levels produced at the beginning of the year.  However, in the general scheme of Daytona’s history, this weekend means just as much – in dissimilar ways.

For the actual competition aspect of NASCAR, this event represents an important time of the season. Daytona is the first of the repeat tracks on the schedule. After this weekend, teams will be facing many tracks for the second time of the year.

Daytona’s July race is considered the halfway point of the season. The crowning of a champion is approaching, so this portion of the year is always extremely imperative to the garage – performance must only increase if there is any hope for holding a trophy at season’s end.

Competition is not everything, especially with a place like this. The week of Independence Day is synonymous with Daytona racing. Back in the old days of the sport, the families of NASCAR would spend each Independence Day, no matter what day of the week, at the speedway. Drivers would battle it out in the morning, before the hot summer Florida temperatures would annex the atmosphere in the afternoon. Racing in the morning would turn to family time in the sun for the rest of the day. The roaring thunder of cars at Daytona would be replaced with the peaceful sounds of families enjoying the day at the beach.  In a competitive environment, the July Daytona race brought some peace to the demands of racing.

Today, the increased competitive environment and demanding characteristics of NASCAR racing may reduce some of this family fun at the beach which once was the norm. Generally, racing has become more serious over the years. But even today, despite the change in times, this race weekend continues to provide importance. This country’s past, how it started, and the values that made it strong are all remembered on this special week, all while enjoying a tradition that despite time, has not weathered.

Daytona is more than just a 2.5 mile high-banked asphalt racetrack. Daytona, and this weekend of racing, is ultimately an American icon, a symbol of independence, an emblem of family, and a representation of American tradition.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – There have been a lot of bumps in the road for Danica Patrick since she was last here at Daytona in February.

Back then, she was the pole winner for the biggest race of the year. She led the race, ran in the top five all day, and was sitting third when the white flag came out in the Daytona 500. She ended up eighth at the finish, but took home as many headlines as winner Jimmie Johnson.

Five months later Patrick returns to Daytona looking to repeat that success. She’s 27th in points entering the holiday weekend and that instant success she felt at the start of the season has faded. It’s been a tough learning curve for the high profile rookie, but being back in a familiar and comfortable place has her feeling at ease.

“We had the pole here in Daytona and started the year off that way. It would be nice to start the second half of the year off the same way,” said Patrick on Thursday at Daytona while speaking to the media.

“At the end of the day it’s not the most important thing, but it sure is nice to start up front. We don’t have our Daytona [500] car here, but we have our backup and that tested really well. We nearly ran that anyway. It should be good still.”

Since the very beginning, all the way back to her stock car debut running the ARCA Series race in 2010, Patrick has taken to the famed speedway. She finished sixth in that event and went on to her NASCAR career by running in the Nationwide Series in 2010 and 2011.

She picked up where she left off those two seasons. Drafting with restrictor plate aces like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart didn’t hurt, as Patrick found herself comfortable running on the high-banked, high speed speedway. She earned a NNS pole, February of 2011, and was in contention for wins in each of the two DIS races.

This season she’s not running in the NNS race. While as a racer, Patrick would love to be behind the wheel, the right circumstances didn’t put here there this weekend.

“Not necessarily. I will always run it if I can. But if I don’t, it’s okay too,” she said when asked if she was disappointed she wasn’t on track when practice began.

“I think that’s about getting the right funding and getting it all together. To be honest, our focus as a team was put on running Watkins Glen, which comes after this one. So, that’s kind of where we put our efforts to get the funding to run. So, I understand that this one came second and it didn’t get done because Watkins Glen is not done. So, I’m okay.”

Saturday night Patrick will run just her third NSCS race at Daytona. But her past success as her marked as one of the favorites for an improbable, but what could become a popular, victory.

But as far as whether she has started to mark down Daytona as a place she could win because of her success, or a place that she’s developing a fondness for, Patrick’s not quite there yet.

“I would say that it came more in Nationwide because it was the best opportunities to win,” Patrick said about her hunger to win at DIS. “Tony Eury Jr. [former NNS crew chief], just like Tony Gibson builds very good speedway cars and I felt like we had a real chance to win on the speedways.”

Patrick admits she learned a lot from the way she ran and how she finished in the Daytona 500. Most importantly, what she needs to do differently this time around to put herself in position to win at Daytona.

“As a driver, if I’m going to pick a race to win, of course I want to win the Daytona 500,” she said.

“That’s a huge one. But as a driver, you want to win the challenging driver tracks. You want to win at places like Bristol or Darlington or places that are more known as driving tracks. So I wouldn’t say I’ve marked it [Daytona] down. No. But I haven’t marked any one of them off.

“So, I’ll take any one I can get.”