On the eve of one of the closet points battle, I cannot help but think what an incredible season it has been. While alot of us have criticized NASCAR for many things I cannot help but point out some of the positives and great things we saw this season.

Trevor Bayne winning the Daytona 500 is one of them. For the first time we saw a very young driver win his first ever race in only his first ever Sprint Cup start and it being none other then the grand daddy of them all, the Daytona 500. He was driving a car built by the Wood Brothers, a now small team that only runs part time.

We saw Regan Smith win the Southern 500. A Yankee from Cato, NY win in a car built by a small team out of Colorado.

What does all this mean? It means that sometimes the underdogs and small teams can still hang with the big boys. That is the one thing that seems to have stood out about this season. Hendrick, Roush, RCR and Gibbs may be the big teams that dominate the sport but this season we witnessed the smaller teams able to hang with the bigger ones.

Not only that but we see Tony Stewart a driver/owner contending for the Sprint Cup against Carl Edwards. Driver/owners are a rare bread in NASCAR Sprint Cup racing. Think about the many driver/owners in our sport that have tried to get this far like say Alan Kulwicki. I hear alot ofargumentsthat the bigger teams make it tougher for the little guys to compete. Well one has to look at how this season we see a driver/owner contending for the cup and how the season started when an unknown won the Daytona 500. It can be done. This year Jimmie Johnson did not dominate. We saw a verycompetitiveseason. I do not support the chase structure but for once it has been a very good season