With two-thirds of the NASCAR schedule buried in the record books, the winding road of the NASCAR regular season makes its penultimate stop at the World Center of Racing: Daytona International Speedway.
Before we dive into the chaos that might await the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series, let’s see what happened in the series’ latest stop in Brooklyn, MI.
Last Week at Michigan…
The wet stuff made its presence felt early and often at Michigan all last weekend. Rain marred practice and qualifying, putting Denny Hamlin at the head of the field for the start of the Firekeepers Casino 400.
Hamlin’s Yahoo! Toyota Camry led the horde of hungry racers into turn 1 and down the backstretch with his employee, Tyler Reddick, riding at his side. Catching a strong draft, Kyle Larson made a daring three-wide pass on both drivers to take the lead where he’d reside for the first 30 laps of the event.
The aggressive veteran sat in Larson’s wake the entire time, making a move off turn 4 on lap 34. The side-by-side action stalled out the #11 and #5, allowing Bubba Wallace to slingshot by both drivers heading into turn 1.
Wallace’s move spurred Hamlin by Larson where the car owner drove up to his driver’s bumper and proceeded to spin himself out coming out of turn 4 on lap 39, bringing out the race’s first caution as weather loomed.
Most of the leaders came down pit road for service while Ryan Blaney and others stayed out in hopes of collecting stage points. The move paid off for the defending Cup champion, snagging his third stage win of 2024 while Wallace fell just short in fourth.
Then came the waterworks.
We returned on Monday at 11am Eastern Time to complete the event, and Chase Elliott inherited the lead for the next restart, an advantage he’d hold for 10 laps before Kyle Busch drove by into turn 3 after a wicked push from Bubba Wallace on lap 58.
Busch held the lead until “Marty Monday” Martin Truex Jr. entered the fray and stole the lead away on lap 66. The 2017 champion sped away until relinquishing the lead to make a green-flag pit stop. When stops cycled through, Larson rebounded by taking the lead and sparing with Truex until something strange occurred.
Within one lap, three cars suffered tire failures: Todd Gilliland, AJ Allmendinger, and Joey Logano. Logano’s tire came to a rest on the racing surface, bringing out the third caution and forcing teams to choose strategy over stage points yet again.
Five laps remained in stage 2 when the pack saw the green again, but it wasn’t for long. The slower cars on older tires created mayhem in the midpack as strong cars on fresher tires scrambled to move forward.
Larson shot to the bottom in turn 3, getting caught in the heavy wake of a car ahead and breaking traction like Hamlin did before him.
The Indy 500 rookie of the year failed to hold onto his vehicle and triggered a multi-car melee, ruining the promising days of Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, and Chase Briscoe.
For Wallace, it represented another missed opportunity with one of the fastest cars in the field while his team is on the Playoff bubble; it was just another example of being in the wrong place at the worst time.
This caution ended the second stage, awarding the Playoff point to Kyle Busch. As the final stage got rolling under green, the series’ most notorious competitor made his most recent contribution to NASCAR.
Corey Lajoie took exception to a Noah Gragson block coming out turn 2, so on lap 137, the #7 car made his move in the same spot, getting underneath Gragson briefly before careening into the #10 car’s left-rear quarter panel on the back straight.
The contact shot Lajoie’s Garner Trucking Chevy into the paved apron where a strong wind current picked his car off the ground and rolled it over onto its roof where it slid for a few hundred feet. After clipping the edge of the grass entering turn 3, the car tumbled back onto its wheels, leaving Lajoie unscathed inside the car.
While several drivers hit pit road, much of the lead pack stayed out as they knew it was possible to make it 60 laps on fuel. Chase Elliott nabbed the lead from Byron on the ensuing restart and held it until lap 161 when Reddick clawed his way back to the top of the pylon.
Reddick and Elliott ducked in for the money stop not long after, leaving Busch on the track to manage his tires before pitting for just two right-side tires with 32 laps to go.
Crew chief Randall Burnett’s gambit paid off, giving his championship driver the lead in the closing stages and the ability to put the ugliness of the week before in the rearview mirror.
As cars completed their final stops, Reddick made what looked to be the decisive pass on Busch on the exit of turn 2 with 25 laps to go while they fought for 11th on the track.
The #8 Lucas Oil Chevy gave it everything they had, but the tire disparity made all the difference as the other four-tire stoppers slowly made their way by Kyle. All the while Reddick separated himself from the challengers behind, setting himself up for a long-awaited second win of the season.
That is until Martin Truex Jr. made contact with the turn 4 wall while running in the top-5, curiously bringing out a caution with just six laps remaining. For the ninth time this year, NASCAR sent the field into Overtime.
Reddick complained about the quick trigger from race direction as Truex corrected his car and left what appeared to be no debris on the track after his contact.
The driver of the #45 McDonalds Toyota was further incensed when Byron was awarded the lead on the following restart after a Ross Chastain spin sent the field into a second Overtime period.
NASCAR re-racked the field for the lap 205 green flag where a generous push from Ty Gibbs propelled his Toyota teammate to the lead over Byron.
As Byron held his breath for the final few corners to conserve fuel, Reddick breathed a sigh of relief, capturing his seventh career Cup Series victory at a track where he maintained a 26th-place average finish.
The win also moved the #45 team into the top spot in the regular season standings heading into Daytona this weekend while Chase Elliott further tanked his chances by running out of room on the final lap. Contact with Ryan Blaney dropped both drivers out of the top-15 when they took the checkers.
The News
Richard Childress Racing filed an appeal last week after NASCAR’s decision to strip Austin Dillon’s Playoff eligibility in response to his actions on the final lap at Richmond.
The appeal failed, but Richard Childress is taking this decision to the Final Appeals Officer for a final review.
More devastating penalties hit a driver involved in that fiasco. Denny Hamlin and his #11 team were docked 75 driver and owner points for an infraction dealing with their engines. TRD self-reported the infraction.
In terms of driver movement and silly season drama, Zane Smith and Trackhouse mutually agreed to part ways at the end of the 2024 season, allowing the 2022 Truck Series champion to pursue other opportunities.
The California native struggled for much of the first half of the season, no doubt hindered by the transition from racing a Ford to a Chevy while adjusting to a full-time Cup slate.
That said, his performance improved dramatically since his surprise runner-up result at the insane Nashville race, running in the top-5 late in the going at Indy and notching a second top-10 at Michigan last weekend.
Multiple teams share the belief that the 25-year-old racer could blossom with time as he did in the Truck Series, and he’s been linked most notably to the third Front Row seat vacated by Michael McDowell in what could be an effective seat swap between the two drivers.
The Track
When the NASCAR Cup Series comes to Daytona, the racing features foot-to-the-floor, pedal-to-the-metal action all while being less than an arm’s length from the car ahead, the car behind, and the cars beside you.
Daytona International Speedway is a colossal facility, sitting at an intimidating 2.5 miles of concrete and chaos. The circuit contains daunting 31° turns that push the drivers and cars to their limits in the heat of the pack.
Because of the nature of Daytona’s full-throttle action, NASCAR lowers the horsepower at these tracks from 670HP to 550HP to keep cars on the ground in case they get sideways or spin around, much like what happened with Corey Lajoie at Michigan. This allows the cars to stay bunched together in packs.
Like wolves, all 40 of these howling mechanical mechanical marvels will mash the gas all the way around Daytona in a large group, only hitting the brakes when the caution comes out or entering pit lane.
That’s what makes The Draft so integral to these superspeedway races.
Each car creates a turbulence behind it that influences the handling of any car trailing it; at most tracks, this is a detriment to the car behind. But at Daytona, the car behind runs quicker and usually more efficiently because it is pushing through less air.
Unlike the action at most tracks where 30th place is lucky to be a lead-lap car, it’s common to see the leader sit just a second ahead of cars 30 positions behind them.
Surprise winners make names for themselves at the track’s hallowed grounds by avoiding the carnage and reaching the checkered before whatever lays in their wake catches up to them.
The trickiest aspect of this circuit is the 18° banked trioval. The cars become light at the entries and exits of the turns and the trioval, so an ill-timed push can unleash the dreaded Big One.
To master Daytona, a driver must master their ability to make quick decisions in traffic, have the patience to know when to act, and sense the movement of the air around them. With 20 desperate souls outside of the Playoffs, it’s impossible to predict what we might see on Saturday night when the laps approach single digits.
Weather & Fast Facts
Like last week, rain looks to plague yet another race weekend in 2024.
Constant moisture assisted in the movement of Daytona’s second race date, divorcing it from its traditional July 4th weekend slot in 2020 to make it the cutoff race before the Playoffs. Since the move, this will be the first season it won’t be the cutoff race due to the Olympic break earlier this month.
The Weather Channel projects that precipitation could pop up between 11am and 2pm tomorrow, long before tomorrow’s scheduled green-flag drop.
Once that system moves through, the rest of the evening shows mostly cloudy skies for the rest of the evening while the cars race under the lights on the Atlantic coast with temperatures hovering in the low 80s.
As for the average Daytona summer race, it looks a little something like this: 7 cautions for 32 caution laps, 29 lead changes, 7,871 green-flag passes (for an average of 61.5 green-flag passes per lap!), and a lap of final caution falling on lap 157.
If you’ve been keeping up with this Almanac throughout the year, first of all, I want to thank you, but second of all, four laps to go is easily the lowest average lap of last caution on the entire NASCAR schedule.
In fact, this race has gone into NASCAR Overtime a staggering seven times since 2014, and two of the races that weren’t included ended early due to rain. The other could’ve been ended early due to rain, but NASCAR did everything they could to get seven cars out on the race track for the final 25 laps.
Tonight’s pivotal regular-season showdown airs on NBC at 7:30pm Eastern time with new play-by-play announcer Leigh Diffey taking the reigns with Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte.
The 2024 Coke Zero Sugar 400 runs to a scheduled distance of 160 laps and is broken up into three stages ending on: laps 35-95-160. Front Row Motorsports’ Michael McDowell and Todd Gilliland locked out the front row for the first time in their team’s history.
The Odds
Rather than rely on what the DraftKings oddmakers think, it’s much more fun to just let fate decide who will do well at these big drafting tracks.
So, I present to you the successor to the randomizer I’d been using for previous Almanac entries:
Yes, it’s a fortune cookie. Here’s how I’ll handle this: the lucky numbers will determine the selections. If a number isn’t a direct match, the next closest car number will be chosen.
Kyle Busch (+1400) enters this weekend in a must-win situation to secure a Playoff spot for the first time in his career. The two-time champion still seeks his first victory of 2024, and he’s more determined than ever to keep his yearly win streak alive. With RCR in need of a Playoff berth, expect Rowdy to find his way to the front.
Behind Busch in points is Chase Briscoe (+4000). The Stewart-Haas Racing pilot got caught up in a late-race wreck with teammate Ryan Preece last season, locking him out of the Playoffs last season. With a golden opportunity to lock himself in at Daytona, Briscoe could avoid calamity and contend for the win.
After a disappointing finish at Michigan, Bubba Wallace (+1400) sits just one point outside of the Playoffs at the moment. The 23XI flagship driver owns five top-5s at Daytona, one of NASCAR’s most unpredictable facilities, so if the Columbia car swims upstream and leads the pack, Bubba just might tip the scales in his favor.
Daytona 500 winner William Byron (+1400) nearly stole a victory away from Reddick at Michigan, settling for second. The Hendrick Motorsports star hasn’t found the consistency that defined his 2023 campaign, but notching another victory at Daytona where he claimed his first win four years ago would help immensely.
Kaulig Racing’s Daniel Hemric (+8000) has yet to finish in the top-10 at the World Center of Racing. The 2021 Xfinity champion’s lone NASCAR victory came at Phoenix in that very championship race; though he later joined Kaulig’s dominant Xfinity program, he came away without a win. Perhaps that changes tonight.
Last on this list is Austin Hill (+6500). Riding in a third RCR entry, the Georgian has made his mark on the Xfinity Series, earning all but two of his victories on superspeedways. While a Hill victory does nothing for the company, it would give the 30-year-old an opportunity to show other Cup teams what he’s capable of in Cup.
Writer’s Pick
I picked Bubba Wallace last week, and guess what?
(I’m going to be doing it again.)
Three runner-up finishes at one track would lead most people to believe a driver is destined to score a win there; Daytona is just that different of a beast.
Bubba tends to rise to the occasion, and with a strong set of experienced Toyota teammates, the 29-year-old will act with poise and hold a deft wheel all night, waiting for the perfect time to strike.
Don’t expect the famed #23 car co-owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin to just ride around either. With just one point separating him from the Playoffs, the Columbia crew will look to get stage points in tonight’s race as well, potentially putting himself at risk of getting caught up in someone else’s mess.
Even when that’s happened to Wallace in the past here, it hasn’t stopped him.
His 2022 effort in the Daytona 500 saw him lose a fender and still finish second. His first shot at the Great American Race showed him keep his car clean until the finish line when he and Hamlin made contact. In this race four years ago, he got caught up in a late collision that dropped him to 27th to start Overtime.
He finished fifth that night. Bubba Wallace is my pick to win the Coke Zero Sugar 400.
(Top Photo Credit: HHP/Chris Owens Photo)
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