For a solid week, the majority of NASCAR's best and brightest talked about how the Daytona 500 would have very little to do with the second race in California.

            Matt Kenseth made them all look like liars, or, at the very least, propagandists.

            Kenseth remains the most upwardly mobile of all NASCAR drivers. He started 39^th in the Daytona 500 and won it. He qualified 24^th for the Auto Club 500, which, by the way, was naturally run at Auto Club Speedway.

            Kenseth won again. Surely that ought to be worth an Auto Club membership. It goes nicely with the Sprint Cup points lead.

            All night long, things were not as they seemed. For instance, the first four caution flags were all due to rain. Who says it never rains in Southern California? The Mamas and the Papas? Well, it must have been different back in the 1960s, or else, they weren't singing about Fontana, where it's rained on consecutive February NASCAR weekends. The track's management complained about it being too hot on Labor Day weekend. Now it's too wet in February. About 60,000 brave fans reportedly braved the drizzle. Maybe next year track president Gillian Zucker will take a look at the five-day forecast, call Daytona Beach, and everyone will hightail it to the West Coast whenever she says.

            OK, no rain. That's good. It's not hot. That's good. Oh, no, the air quality is going down. Rats. Those stock-car exhausts will make it worse. It's off. Check back with us next week. Go ahead and let Martinsville have this Sunday.

            It's only two races into the season. There's no reason to get carried away. The polls are far from closing, so let's go easy with the exit polls. Still, it seems like the balance of power has shifted.

            Kenseth, winless last year, is "lossless" so far in this one. Kevin Harvick, winless last year, has already won, albeit unofficially, in the Budweiser Shootout. Jeff Gordon, winless last year, has won a 150-mile qualifying race at Daytona, and that's something, though it won't be recalled after a couple more weeks. And Gordon trailed Kenseth across the finish line Sunday night.

            In other news, Kyle Busch failed in his outrageous attempt to win three so-called "major NASCAR touring races" on the same weekend. His average finish, 1.67, wasn't too shabby. He won two races, one in the Camping World Truck Series and the other in the Nationwide Series, on the same day.

            What sets Busch's records apart from most is that they are unprecedented for a reason. Very few other drivers - not even the "drivaholics" like Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards - ever wanted to race 1,000 miles on the same weekend. It's kind of like comparing Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt at Daytona. Earnhardt won more total races, but all of Petty's victories were the ones that counted. And Petty never ran on Saturday or cared much for shootouts and qualifying races.

            In short, last year Kyle Busch won 21 races last year, which was remarkable, but it would've been more remarkable if anyone else had tried.