DAYTONA BEACH, Fla – A lot of people were left Sunday evening with a feeling of more to be desired following the rain soaked Advance Auto Parts Clash at Daytona. This year’s race wasn’t one of the finer moments in the history of the event.

See, we only saw five lead changes. But, one was at the start of the race when Kyle Busch passed Paul Menard for the lead on the opening lap and another was when Menard passed him back one lap later. The next came when Menard elected to pit coming to the Lap 25 competition caution handing the lead to Austin Dillon. The fourth came after the pit sequence when Dillon pitted and the last when Jimmie Johnson and Menard made contact on the backstretch on Lap 55.

Other than that, we saw single file racing throughout. Throw in three rain delays, the last ending the race after 59 of 75 laps and you get a ho-hum race.

It seems like every year we’re questioning the racing in the Clash and every year we wonder if that will translate over to the Daytona 500 a week later. While it typically doesn’t, some drivers that ran in the Clash on Sunday are thinking that what we saw in the Clash could potentially be a precursor to what we see in the ‘500 too.

There are a few reasons as to why.

The first is the weather. Last year, the Clash saw much cooler temperatures than the Daytona 500 itself. While both were sunny days, the Daytona 500 was raced in warmer conditions. This year’s forecast has similar temperatures forecasted. Hopefully it’s not as rainy on Sunday, but temps are supposed to be in the 60’s, just like it was for the Clash.

The drivers said that if the temperatures were hotter for the ‘500, it would make Daytona’s 2.5-mile racing surface hotter and slicker which would promote more side-by-side racing. It would make the track treacherous and allow cars to slip and slide more.

The Clash saw max grip levels even when the cars were trimmed out, which is a big part of why we saw cars running in single file.

The next season is due to the aerodynamic package. The top two finishers in Sunday’s Clash said the high line is the way to go around Daytona and the drivers learned the side force only works when drafting off the right quarter panel. Well, how can you draft off someone’s right quarter panel when they’re running the high line around the banking?

“I wish I knew,” said Kurt Busch on why the racing was single file. “That would be the golden ticket, to create the better racing and the stability of the cars side by side.  If I had a magic wand, I would wave it.  We’re all smart guys.  That’s why we’re running the high groove.  The cars don’t side draft as well off the left side.  The right side is too vulnerable.  And so when you draft off somebody on the right, you dump a lot more air on to their rear spoiler and you take away their sideforce on the right side of the cars.  We’ve an at oval – we’re turning left.  The right side is very important.

“So if we can get the cars less dependable on the sideforce, that’s what I would try to explain to the fans, and that’s what I thought the cars were more of when I first started racing.”

Clash winner Jimmie Johnson agreed. He did say with double the amount of cars in the Daytona 500 that maybe that will change the racing, but if not, this package is to blame.

“Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of opportunities to pass, but when the line is around the top, you get runs and you just — you can’t pull out,” Johnson said. “There’s a line 20 cars long that you’ll never get back in, and that was just today.  In the 500 it’ll be 40 cars long.  It’s circumstantial to what’s going on, and this rules package has kind of trended towards the middle of the race track or the high lane, just the cars stay wound up and you’re at higher RPM and the engines pull better.  The bottom lane it’s easy to really stop that car with a side draft and get their RPM too low to where the engine doesn’t pull.

“So we’re all kind of fighting for the outside in general.  Restarts, the outside lane seems to be the lane you want to be in, and that just kind of takes you forward. And then when it gets to single file on the top, I mean, you’re just waiting.  That’s all we did at — every time we got 5 or 10 laps in, it went single file at the top, and everybody is just waiting for that chance that it’s safe to make a pass or you think that you’re coming to the checkered or something like that.”

Does that make it sound like the Daytona 500 will be any different? Also, there’s this, Ford’s are the ones to beat again.

Heading into this season, Ford’s have won 13 of the last 18 points paying restrictor plate races. This year though, they have a new bodystyle in the Mustang. The past success was with the Fusion. Some of the drivers have said that the Mustang may actually be better in this plate package than it’s predecessor.

The best to find out from was Kurt Busch. He raced a Ford last year and a Chevy now this year. He basically said the Ford’s suck up better it seemed this year than last and that the only way to beat them is to split them up.

“Each time I looked up I counted a lot of Fords, so I still think they were hooked up,” said Busch. “For me, I have the intel of being on the inside and knowing how they operate, and so I was just like trying to blend in and act like I was a Ford for a little bit, and then we started picking them off one at a time, and then once we got just Menard by himself, that’s when I really thought the racing was going to get good, and unfortunately the wreck happened and then the rain came.  It was all matching up to be a really good finale with the 25 laps to go. Yeah, the Fords win in numbers, and that’s the key.  They’re still just as strong, but there’s a lot of them.

“Apples to apples, because I came from a Ford last year at Talladega, and I felt like I had an easier time pulling up to the car in front of me last year versus today’s race.”