DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- It's taken a while to sort it all out, but Ward Burton's win in the Daytona 500 now makes perfect sense.

Burton led only five of the 200 laps, and it took a bizarre series of happenings to put him in Victory Lane on Sunday.

	Ward Burton's car owners, Bill and Gail Davis, celebrate after winning the Daytona 500.

But if anyone deserved to benefit from Jeff Gordon's misfortune, it was Burton's car owners, Bill and Gail Davis.

The Arkansas couple has poured their hearts and finances into stock car racing for 15 years, and they had this one coming.

NASCAR is a soap opera on wheels, and once you know the stories and relationships of the characters involved, every turn represents another twist in the plot.

The final act in Sunday's Daytona 500 played out with six laps remaining when Gordon, running first, threw an ill-advised block on Sterling Marlin and took himself out of contention.

You know the rest of the story: Marlin made an illegal repair under ensuing red flag conditions and was forced to drop to the rear, enabling Burton to cruise to the victory.

And so Gordon's loss was Bill Davis Racing's greatest win. A racing deal gone bad finally came full circle.

It has been 10 years since Gordon left Davis Racing, but you can still see the pain in eyes of Bill and Gail when his name is mentioned.

"He was our little driver," Gail Davis said. "Of course we felt affection toward him. Our feelings were hurt when he quit us, because we trusted him."

Gordon's major league success story began in 1993, when he won Winston Cup Rookie of the Year honors driving for Rick Hendrick.

But before piloting the rainbow Chevrolet to stardom, Gordon spent two years in the minor leagues of the Busch Series driving a Ford for Davis.

Gordon was the kind of driver every car owner dreamed of having: young, talented, articulate and hungry. In 1991, Gordon won Busch Series Rookie of the Year honors, and he and Davis were on their way to the big leagues.

All they needed was a sponsor, and so early in the 1992 season they went shopping for one in Minnesota.

"Bill and Jeff went to see Target in Minneapolis," Gail Davis said. "They had a very good meeting, very agreeable. They came out of the meeting and got on the elevator, and Jeff says 'by the way Bill, I'm not going to drive for you. I'm going to sign a contract with Rick Hendrick.'"

Bill Davis had been around racing a long time, having followed the sport his whole life before running ASA and eventually Busch Series races with Mark Martin from 1987-91.

But he had never seen anything like this.

"Oh yeah, it was shock," Davis said. "We had invested a lot in him."

Davis said he and Gordon had a handshake agreement that the young star would stick with him through the jump to Winston Cup. The actual contract read differently, however, and Gordon exercised his option.

"I don't know if Bill spoke to Jeff the rest of the season," Gail Davis said. "But we set all these records. They managed to pull off a great season, and never speak."

The record books show Gordon won 11 poles and three Busch Series races for Bill Davis Racing in 1992 before jumping ship.

Ten years later, one day after winning the Daytona 500, Bill Davis was able to put a positive spin on it.

"We can credit each other for getting each other noticed," Davis said. "If we hadn't had him in the car for a couple of years, we may not have gotten to where we're at. We ran well enough for people to recognize what we had going on."

Bobby Labonte was impressed enough to take Gordon's seat in Davis' race car, and in 1993, they went Winston Cup racing together with Maxwell House as the sponsor.

Two years later, with Davis having sponsor troubles, Labonte left for the greener pastures of Joe Gibbs' team.

Three drivers took turns behind the wheel for Davis in 1995 before Burton filled the seat for the final nine races that season.

"We thought (Burton) had a lot of raw talent," Davis said. "We watched him go real fast, crash real hard, shake it off, and go real fast again."

That was certainly the case in the past two Daytona 500s.

Burton led the most laps (53) in last year's Daytona 500 before getting wrecked in the closing laps by Robby Gordon, who is only related to Jeff Gordon in the sense that he also played a role in Sunday's outcome.

Indeed, it was none other than Robby Gordon who spun out in Turn 2 to bring out the caution period that set up Jeff Gordon's fateful restart with six laps remaining.

Yep, there's a twist in every turn, and the more you think about it, the more it all makes sense.

Mike Griffith writes for The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee.