At the dawn of the next quarter century, the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series stand tall on the horizon as a new season approaches with 36 opportunities to prove they are the world’s best stock car driver.
Like every year since 1982, the first opportunity holds the most weight: the Daytona 500.
An event lasting 500 miles over 200 laps around a 2.5-mile behemoth tests the courage, the discipline, and the ego of 41 competitors vying for the vaunted Harley J. Earle Trophy.
All of this at over 190 miles per hour, inches apart on the edge of control.
A nudge, a push goes awry and wipes out a chunk of the competition. Some cars bring it home clean, and others? They’re pieced together and symbolize the beauty of teamwork in auto racing.
With the sport’s biggest prize and a Playoff berth on the line, every driver’s willing to risk it all for the glory of being a Daytona 500 champion. Who’s Next?
Speedweeks – Duels, Trucks, & Xfinity
Wednesday’s qualifying session saw a number of fresh faces at the front of the field as well as some former champions locking themselves into the season opener.
A NextGen era-record of 45 qualifiers took to the high banks of Daytona for today’s race with Chase Briscoe from Joe Gibbs Racing laying down the hottest lap at 49.218 seconds, narrowly defeating Team Penske’s Austin Cindric by .138 seconds.
As part of the nine teams that came to Florida without a chartered entry, these “Open” teams needed to lay down a quick time in order to lock themselves into the 500 before Thursday’s Duels.
Of those drivers, three made the race, and they are familiar faces: Martin Truex Jr.’s #56 Toyota with Tricon Garage and Jimmie Johnson’s #84 Toyota with Legacy Motor Club both locked themselves into the field on time, logging the 22nd and 28th-fastest times, respectively.
The other driver was new to Daytona, a stock car newcomer by the name of Helio Castroneves. Known for his Indianapolis heroics, the storied open-wheeler was locked into the Daytona 500 because his team enacted the Open Exemption Provisional. To learn more about that rule, click here.
High-speed, on-track action continued on Thursday as the Duel races began with a full moon overhead. Duel 1 went off the handle early and often with five cars falling out due to crash damage or mechanical issues.
In the end, Bubba Wallace put on a sterling performance in the closing laps, taking a push from 23XI teammate Tyler Reddick to notch his first Daytona Duel victory and secure a third-place starting spot for Sunday.
Over in Duel 2, front-row starter Austin Cindric was determined to send a message as the 2022 Daytona 500 champ kept his car in the front on his way to a controversial victory over Erik Jones.
Coming to the checkers, a crash involving Shane van Gisbergen and Christopher Bell sprouted up in the back of the field, leading to the officials to trigger the caution button prior to the cars crossing the line. When the finish was initially shown, Jones clearly nosed past Cindric at the line.
Since NASCAR relies on photos as well as timing and scoring loops when a caution is thrown, it was decided that Cindric was ahead at the time of caution, giving him the victory but not the flag that Jones took with him.
Down in the Craftsman Truck Series, the cloud of controversy hung over its finish as well. After a crash midway through the final stage wiped out a number of strong drivers, the race came down to a battle between part-time racer Parker Kligerman and two-time series champion Ben Rhodes.
Kligerman’s #75 truck motored ahead down the backstretch while Rhodes attempted to generate momentum on the bottom. Rhodes pinched into the center lane just as his teammate Johnny Sauter got out of shape on the top, sending Sauter across the nose of Tanner Gray and into Rhodes on the bottom.
The ThorSport contact sent them onto the apron while the rest of the field struggled to gather its bearings before slipping and falling completely.
Parker got away to a clean victory with Corey Heim taking second. That was until about 90 minutes later when NASCAR stripped the win away from the #75 team and awarded it to Heim after officials found the winning truck failed to meet ride height requirements. Henderson Motorsports has filed an appeal.
Yesterday in the Xfinity Series, Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Hill came into the race with a chance to win his fourth-straight win in the season-opening race at Daytona, but that would slowly be undone by what appeared to be an axle issue that permanently sidelined him after final pit stops.
During that same caution period is when the race started to devolve when Our Motorsports’ Kris Wright drove through Josh Bilicki during that same round of pit stops. The field grew calm, but it would be short-lived as Justin Bonsignore set off a multi-car accident with less than 10 laps to go.
With two laps to go, Sheldon Creed dove from the top to the middle lane, creating a logjam that sent JR Motorsports driver Connor Zilisch being tossed around like a frisbee into the pack and ending his night.
The race came down to a pivotal Overtime restart for Jesse Love. Driving the iconic #2 for RCR, Love threw a wicked block on the inside line that allowed him to pull away coming to the white flag where defending champion Justin Allgaier caused a wreck that brought out the race-ending caution.
Jesse Love kept his team’s four-year streak alive with a landmark victory that locks the sophomore driver into the Playoffs for the second consecutive season.
NASCAR News
If you’re looking for a detailed analysis of the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, our editor Madelyn submitted her review of the exhibition race, which you can read here.
Trackhouse Racing co-owner and international music star Pitbull announced his professional departure from the team effective immediately, he announced on Twitter on Friday.
In the court of law, the federal antitrust lawsuit brought upon by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports rages on with a new wrinkle. If you’d like to get caught up on the lawsuit, here’s Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass’ running log of events with updates made when necessary.
NASCAR filed an appeal to the preliminary injunctions issued by Judge Kenneth Bell to 23XI and FRM to operate as chartered teams and earn the requisite money they would’ve lost from being Open teams.
The appeal rehashes much of what NASCAR has already said throughout the various hearings already held but added that Judge Bell acted inconsistently with precedent.
The Race
The 67th running of the Great American Race will air on FOX at 1:30pm Eastern time with Mike Joy, Kevin Harvick, and Clint Bowyer in the booth for the 200-lap affair. Those 200 laps will be separated into three stages that end on the following laps: 65-130-200.
Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric hold the front row for NASCAR’s answer to the Super Bowl, but for a detailed breakdown of the starting grid, click here.
If this race follows the trends of the last 10 Daytona 500s, it would look something like this: 8 cautions for 36 caution laps, 27 lead changes, 8,691 green-flag passes, and Overtime being used in five of the last seven.
Denny Hamlin is the series’ only active full-time driver with multiple Daytona 500 victories, winning in 2016 prior to going back-to-back in 2019 and 2020. “The King” Richard Petty holds the record for most victories with seven Harley J. Earle Trophies to his name.
Daytona International Speedway is a mammoth of a facility, standing at an hulking 2.5 miles and featuring steep 31 degree turns that push the drivers and the racing machines to their limits in the heat of the pack.
It’s common to see the leader only be a little over a second ahead of 35th place whereas at a place like Martinsville or Bristol, 35th would be fortunate to be on the lead lap.
This allows for surprise winners, unheralded drivers making a name for themselves by streaking first to the finish line.
The most difficult aspect of this superspeedway is the trioval, which is banked at 18 degrees. At the entries and exits of the turns and the trioval, the cars become light, so an ill-timed push can trigger the dreaded Big One.
The keys to these races are mastering the draft and survival, plain and simple. The fastest car hardly ever wins this historic event because raw speed oftentimes has little to do with your end result.
Writer’s Pick
In appearances I’ve made on the Gay Racing Podcast and for GRID Network leading up to this race, I have consistently stuck with two-time series champion Kyle Busch as my pick.
My selection is rooted in history as Busch enters his 20th Daytona 500 as a driver for Richard Childress Racing in the #8 zOne Chevy Camaro.
Another former champion that drove for RCR had a legendary 20th attempt at this very race 27 years ago.
After a winless 1997 campaign, Dale Earnhardt Sr. powered to his first Daytona 500 victory in 1998. Kyle Busch is also coming off of a winless season, the first of his career.
Superspeedway races are often a virtual impossibility to predict, but Kyle Busch kept his car clean despite the craziness of the first Duel on Thursday night.
Rolling off the grid in 21st, I suspect the Las Vegas native will join his brother as a Daytona 500 champion and end that 57-race winless streak that dates back to Gateway in 2023.
(Top Photo Credit: David Graham/AP Photo)
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