Tony Stewart acknowledged he had a pretty eventful Saturday night in the Sprint Unlimited. Mostly because of the positions he put himself and his competitors in, which he takes responsibility for.

Stewart finished fourth in the exhibition race held for former winners of the race as well as pole winners from 2012. His Mobil 1 / Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet was one of the fastest on track, challenging for the lead and showing the ability to go from the back of the pack to the front, repeatedly.

But 15 laps into the first segment Stewart made a mistake. Looking to jump in line in front of Marcos Ambrose he cut across the nose of the No. 9 and got sideways. The result was drivers behind Stewart reacting and creating a six-car wreck. Then late in the second segment he made contact with Dale Earnhardt Jr. when Earnhardt Jr. made a move three-wide.

“I self-cleared myself in [turn] one and wasn’t. I don’t think I was clear obviously,” said Stewart afterwards about his night. “I clipped whoever was in third [Ambrose]. Dale Jr. came down to the middle and where he was at made me really tight. I got up into him and then I got into him and couldn’t get off of him, bounced off of him about three times.

“I made sure our spotter told him what happened, but I definitely was in enough interesting spots tonight for sure and most of them I put myself in.”

Stewart, who started 14th, won the first 30-lap segment. He was never far from the front and the second segment was no different, even after the contact with Earnhardt Jr. But Stewart credited NASCAR’s new car, the Gen6, saying that he was pretty impressed with how solid the car is and how the contact never changed his balance.

The third segment however, Stewart found himself in the tire tracks of eventual winner Kevin Harvick. Following the Budweiser Chevrolet for most of the final 20 laps before trying to make his move on the final lap. Stewart though, again put himself in the wrong position and was left to watch Harvick and others scoot away.

“Tonight is the reason why I haven’t won the Daytona 500 yet. I’m not sure where I’ve got to be on the last lap there and what to do,” he said. “We heard the Fords were ganging up and trying something.

“Then we saw the No. 22 [Joey Logano] on the bottom all of a sudden, so I went where I thought was the right place to be and we lost two spots with it. I would rather try something and it not work than stay and lose a bunch of spots and I would probably be more frustrated because I didn’t try something.”

Even still, Stewart felt he learned a lot ahead of next Sunday’s Daytona 500. A race, as he noted, he has yet to win. Fortunately, Stewart-Haas Racing has cars for Speedweeks which are fast and all have a shot to win the 55th annual event. That, above all else, is what Stewart is most proud of, even after a disappointing night.

“We’ve got really good race cars. I’m really proud of the Hendrick engine department and everybody at Stewart-Haas,” said the team owner. “To go through the winter these guys have gone through and trying to build cars at the last minute because of the shortage of parts and to bring two cars down here that are this fast.

“I’m really proud of our organization right now.”

Why I watched…

NASCAR returned with 19 of its stars in its annual pre-season contest featuring the pole winners from last season, along with the former winners of what had been known as the Bud Shootout. More importantly, we were hoping for a real good look at the new Gen 6 car to see if the new design could actually lend itself to a more visually appealing contest.

The race…

Yes! Yes! Yes! If they had the broadcast of this race up on one of those HD big screens, be it in Times Square or just in a department store showroom, people would have stopped and watched. That is when you know you have something. Under the lights in Daytona with cars that looks like real cars, with gyro-cams tilting as they went along the high banks and the overhead cam chasing them as they sailed more than 190 mph down the straightaway. Yes, it looked impressive.

It was not impressive that Terry Labonte made five laps then parked. Anyone see enough of that car to see if it even had a sponsor? Did something actually go wrong mechanically or it was just pulled before something did? If anything happened that was unexpected on the night, that might have been it.

You knew we would be in line for some action, especially after Dale Earnhardt Jr mentioned to his guys that he hoped they were not too attached to his car. He was not sure he would bring it home. The likes of Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Martin Truex Jr, and the Busch brothers did not. Lap 15 saw Tony Stewart make a mistake, got nicked by Marcos Ambrose, and while neither wrecked they sure caused a mess behind them. Maybe Labonte’s team read the script before the race and, like the departed manufacturer, got the heck out of Dodge.

It was pretty to watch, and concluded with a bit of drama. For much of this event, we had just a dozen cars running about a second apart. 12 entries that showed that you did not need 43 cars to make a race, just enough who could and would compete. Sometimes you don’t need the hamburger helper when you could simply savor some top choice steak.

When it came time to put the pedal to the metal, we saw Kevin Harvick diving to the inside to block Stewart, then shooting back up to the outside just in time to block Greg Biffle. A split second later and Biffle would have delivered some bad times that would have left Happy testing the fence in a hard way. As it turned out, Harvick did not break his auto until after he crossed the line, and even then that boo-boo was on the inside, not the outside. The #29 still looked as pretty as when they began.

Rating the race – 10 /10…

What more would you want? Maybe a car that would shoot by on the outside in a sleek slingshot maneuver like in the days of old, but that was about it. We had action, we had racing, we had drama, and it was all presented in a fashion that even the most jaded NASCAR hater would have had to be impressed with. If the Daytona Duels on Thursday and next Sunday’s Daytona 500 can match what we just witnessed we are going to have a very good start to the 2013 season. Don’t you agree?

Race Results – Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway