600 reasons why a career isn't made in one night

It was a strange night capped by an even stranger finish, a fuel-mileage scramble that resulted in perhaps the most unlikely lead quintet in modern NASCAR history. The winner had never won before, the runner-up had never been in the top five, the third-place finisher hadn't placed that high in a decade. Fourth place had struggled to finish races, fifth place just to make them. To each driver, the events of that evening at Lowe's Motor Speedway seemed a needed career boost.

But a funny thing happened after the Coca-Cola 600. Casey Mears was moved from one of Hendrick Motorsports' cars to another. J.J. Yeley switched teams and fell out of the top 35, as did Kyle Petty. Reed Sorenson is still recording the same 25th-place finishes he was last year. Only Brian Vickers, currently 17th in Sprint Cup points, can be viewed as having made any progress, proof of how deep a hole Team Red Bull had dug.

It all goes to show that winning can be overrated, and one race victory does not make a career. No disrespect toward fuel-mileage races -- Mears' victory last spring in Charlotte was as legitimate and as well-earned as Jimmie Johnson's at Phoenix or Danica Patrick's in Japan (watch video) -- but it's what a driver does after leaving Victory Lane that matters most. Winning is one thing. Using that victory as a springboard to further success is something else entirely, and a much more difficult proposition at that.

Last year's Coca-Cola 600 was tremendous fun to cover, and great for the sport. It's hard to beat a Mears taking the checkered flag on Memorial Day weekend, a Petty in the post-race interview room, other previously unheralded drivers basking in some rare but needed sunshine (watch video). It's tempting for both onlookers and the drivers themselves to see such showings as glimpses of what's to come, true signs of what a team or a competitor are capable of. Yet in truth, it's but one race out of 36. That much is evident in what happened to each of those top-five finishers, long after the glory of that one night faded away.

Take Mears, for example. The Charlotte victory was a tremendous relief for a driver who carried the pressure of both driving for Hendrick and the most famous last name in racing. "This definitely solidifies that we are a team that is out there to win races, and out there to run up front. We keep getting better all the time," he said (watch video). And for a while they were, notching a handful of top-10s after that Charlotte run. The team is still doing well -- just without Mears, who with the arrival of Dale Earnhardt Jr. was shuffled off to the No. 5 car, his fourth different vehicle in as many years. He's now 27th in points, and struggling as if last year's 600 had never happened.

Yeley has experienced similar changes, with similar results. "A second-place finish is definitely what this Interstate Batteries team needed," he said a year ago, but he wouldn't be part of that team for much longer. Yeley just never clicked in that No. 18 car, and when Kyle Busch became available, like Mears he found himself moving somewhere else. That turned out to be Hall of Fame Racing, an organization run by people who have phenomenal sports track records, yet are still trying to make the NASCAR thing work. Yeley is outside of the top 35 now, but to his credit keeps finding ways to make races every week.

The same can't be said of the third-place finisher from a year ago. Charlotte seemed to be a high point for Petty Enterprises, with Kyle's result paired with Bobby Labonte's 13th. But for Petty, the next five weeks brought finishes of 32nd or worse. The second week of this season, he fell out of the top 35. He missed two races, and turned his car over to Chad McCumbee for another. Beginning at Dover, he'll miss seven consecutive races for his daughter's wedding and television work. People are wondering if he'll come back. To his credit, Kyle didn't make much of that 600 finish. "It's just another race," he said then.

The fourth-place finisher that night was Sorenson, who hadn't cracked the top five since Michigan of the previous year. "We need a boost. We needed a win, but this is close enough right now," he said at the time. Yet the enigmatic Chip Ganassi driver went on to record more of the inconsistent finishes for which he's become known, with a fifth at Indy and a third at Atlanta surrounded by way too many results in the 20s and 30s. Seemingly a can't-miss prospect coming out of Legends and quarter-midget cars, he's now 31st in points and still trying to turn it around.

And then there's Vickers, whose Red Bull car struggled mightily to get into races, but usually was pretty good once it got there. The fifth-place result he recorded last spring at Charlotte was the best for Toyota at the time, and proved a harbinger of what the new manufacturer would be capable of. "It was just another little step in the right direction," Vickers said that night. Now safely in the top 35, he's the only member of that top five to have shown any notable forward progress. A step in the right direction, indeed.

Any driver who wins a race on the Sprint Cup circuit has achieved something notable. Mears will go down in history as the winner of the 600 that night, and the class and emotion he showed in recording that inaugural victory will be long remembered in people's minds. But this is a fickle, difficult sport. Momentum can be an illusion. And the achievements of one race day are often limited to only that, a triumph whose consequence is dampened once engines start again the next week.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.