The Calm Before The Storm

At last we have made it to the final evening before The Great American race. We’ve gone through all of speedweek and now it’s time for the Main event. It’s been an entertaining week so far with a lot of thrills and spills. There’s been a lot of 2-3 wide racing along with crazy finishes and even controversy and it all comes down to tomorrow. We have past champions in the field coming back to make another attempt at the big race. We have champions from other forms of racing making their first start in the race. We even have Dale Jr back in the Daytona 500….sort of. The headlines are everywhere leading into this thing. The grid is set. The teams have made their finishing touches on the cars. The last thing to do is line em up and wake the green flag for 500 miles of racing around the famed Daytona International Speedway.

The first thing to note is due to weather the race has been moved up an hour to try to beat the weather from that is coming through sometime tomorrow afternoon that could leave the track soaked for hours. Coverage on Fox is scheduled to start at 1:30pm EST. Hopefully we are able to get the whole race in at once and we avoid any delays or red flags, but if rain does happen to impact the race, the track does have lights but the rain also isn’t expected to last too long and the race would probably finish under the lights. This would be the 2nd Daytona 500 in a row to be impacted by weather however things don’t look nearly as bad as last year as the 500 was forced to run on Monday.

Now onto the front two rows. We have Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric leading the field to green. Duel 1 winner Bubba Wallace, and the runner up driver in duel 2 Erik Jones (Austin Cindric won duel 2) will start on the second row. This is Briscoe’s first official first points paying race with his new team Joe Gibbs Racing, and while they got off to a fast start with the pole, the team suffered damage in their duel from debris hitting the grill of the car so they had to repair that. He will not have to go to the rear. Cindric is starting on the outside of row one and has shown speed all week so he should be one of the drivers to look out for, as well as his Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney as they have shown an ability to draft together no matter what in past Superspeedway races. Cindric also was able to win his duel race after a late crash off of turn 4 prompted a yellow flag as Cindric was a mere inches ahead of Erik Jones. It was so close that scoring originally showed Jones as the winner only for results to be reversed. This move sparked a little controversy which I’ll later get into. Bubba Wallace was able to lead the most laps in his duel race and after a late caution he was able to with the help from his teammate Tyler Reddick, win his first ever duel at Daytona, and lock up a 3rd place starting spot in the 500. Erik Jones was so close to getting his first duel win in duel 2 but was unfortunately behind Cindric at the wrong time as when the yellow waved, the two cars were side by side very close to the start finish line but Cindric was just ahead at the time of caution. It may have been a tough pill to swallow for Jones but at least he has a 4th place starting spot.

Duel to several wrecks in the duels there will be a handful of drivers starting the race at the rear of the field. Larson, Van Gisbergen, Keselowski, Haley, Bowman, Gibbs, Suarez, and Castroneves all had to go to backups and all will start at the rear. Due to Castroneves wrecking he had to use the provisional so we will have 41 cars in the Daytona 500.

The track surface is starting to age and with the race taking place during the day I am interested to see how the cars react. Duel one was more of a free for all probably due to the early caution for Zane Smith, but I saw the 3rd lane being used effectively. In duel 2 however there was more fuel saving similar to what we’ve seen in recent gen 7 races along with a more strategic specifically with the fords which involved lining up with each other and pitting together, however another caution ended that strategy when the field bunched back up. Duel two at times was more gridlocked as well so I’m not sure if we will see more of what we saw in duel 1, or duel 2, or maybe a mix of both. The cars have been more on edge with the slick surface as several cars such as the 24 of William Byron were wrecking loose just about every lap of the duels and that was at night when the track has the most grip. Hopefully we see some character in this track on full display tomorrow.

My last point to go over is a point that people fear will happen. That is a late race crash deciding the Daytona 500. The last few Daytona 500s have ended under yellow which leaves a lackluster feel to what was otherwise an amazing race. However the finish of duel 2 put NASCAR officiating into the spotlight once again. There was a crash coming off of turn 4 behind the leaders and it looked like NASCAR was going to let the drivers race to the checkered under green but shortly before the lead cars reached the start finish line, the caution and checkered were thrown and that froze the field and ended the race. A lot of people in the fan base and in the industry questioned why does NASCAR not allow the leaders to race to the start finish if it’s the last lap and the wreck is off turn 4. This decision was even further questioned because this was a duel race and the field was smaller than the average field. On one hand safety should be respected and you don’t want people full speeding into clouds of smoke and further damaging cars and putting health at risk, yet on the other hand drivers tend to do that anyway unless they are way behind the wreck. It’s a touchy call, and a frustrating call to make, but there isn’t really a solution that prioritizes safety or doesn’t create a grey area. We can honestly only hope that tomorrow doesn’t end how Duel 2 ended.

As for the winner prediction, I’m picking a Penske car to win, preferably Ryan Newman. I think the discipline that Penske has at these tracks really puts them above the field and the fords in general are normally fast and can draft well together. With the way manufacturers have formed alliances with their own teams, ford seems to be ahead of the game with this strategy and Penske seems to be the leaders of the pack. Blaney is hungry for a 500 trophy and I do believe he will come out on top tomorrow.