By Aaron Bearden

After each NASCAR race weekend, Motorsports Beat will share a piece breaking down the stories and takeaways from the weekend. This is a report on Speedweeks from Daytona International Speedway.

NASCAR Cup Series 

Race: Daytona 500

Track: Daytona International Speedway

Who Won? 

Austin Cindric. The 2020 Xfinity Series champion kicked off his rookie Cup season in grand fashion, holding off Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace to win the sport’s biggest race.

Recap

Top Stories

A big breakthrough

Rarely does one win provide so many converging storylines as Austin Cindric’s triumph in the Daytona 500 did on Sunday evening.

One could look at the surprise of a rookie winning NASCAR’s biggest race. They could focus on Cindric’s difficult beginning on the NASCAR ladder and the success that’s followed. There’s the angle of overcoming the perception of nepotism given that his father, Tim Cindric, is president of Team Penske. There’s even the unique story of Cindric and the driver he replaced at Penske, Brad Keselowski, being tied in points after the opening race.

But focusing on any one angle fails to fully account for one of the Great American Race’s most unique winners.

There was a time when Cindric didn’t look cut out to be a NASCAR driver. He’d started with what appeared to be a path in the open wheel side of racing. That eventually gave way to NASCAR ambitions, but early on Cindric struggled heavily. He crashed in the opening stage of both his Truck and Xfinity debuts at Daytona, triumphed only through contact on a road course in the Truck Series and took 54 starts to break out of the winless column in Xfinity.

By the standard of most rising NASCAR prospects, Cindric could have been considered a bust at that point. He even admitted on Sunday that back then he’d have said “bull****” if told he’d win the Daytona 500 one day.

But Cindric didn’t allow his career to fall apart, or his mind to be swayed by those concerned he could have a silver spoon mentality. He stayed focused, put in long hours and steadily improved over time.

“I would say I’m not an externally motivated person and I’m not an externally intimidated person,” Cindric said afterward. “My head is pretty much in the game 24/7. I don’t think about much, anything else, except for racing. I don’t have much of a social life. I hardly do anything else but go to the race shop and spend time either staring at my race cars or working out or spending time with my crew chief.

“For me, I guess I don’t have time for the noise.”

The end result of that focus and effort is a victory in NASCAR’s biggest race. Cindric will forever be enshrined in the sport’s lore as a Daytona 500 champion, giving him something of a legacy even as he makes his first steps at the Cup level.

It also buys Cindric something few rookies have had – the chance to proceed through his first season without the pressures of playoff expectation.

Cindric is already locked into the postseason thanks to his Daytona breakthrough. That means he can try things, fail and learn over his first regular season run without having to worry about any playoff repercussions.

“I know there’s going to be a lot of highs and lows in a rookie season,” Cindric admitted. “There’s going to be a lot of highs and lows with a new race car. So to be able to give ourselves that type of security this early in the season gives us some flexibility, gives me time to be patient.

“I think that’s the biggest thing because even through testing I have to remind myself to be patient. If it’s the drivers that I’m now competing against or a new situation, I think patience is certainly going to pay off to make sure I don’t miss anything throughout the learning process.”

Same result, different sensation

Bubba Wallace was so close he could taste it.

There’s no crueler loss in racing than one that comes from close enough to make the winner’s photo. Wallace found himself in that position on Sunday, coming within .036s of a Daytona 500 victory.

It wasn’t the first time Wallace had finished second in the Great American Race. He kicked off his first full-time season with a runner-up run in the No. 43 Chevrolet, trading paint with future boss Denny Hamlin in the run to the line as Austin Dillon scored the victory ahead of them in 2018.

But this loss stung in a different way.

In those days everything was new. Wallace has expectations now. He’s a Cup Series winner, driving for one of the sport’s biggest teams, co-owned by iconic NBA legend Michael Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin.

“I didn’t have a fighting chance the first time in 2018,” Wallace said. “This one being that close, it’s like a gut punch.”

For a brief moment, it appeared that Wallace might pull off the pass of a lifetime. When Cindric moved up to block Blaney on the high lane, Wallace dove love and pulled alongside him with a run from Aric Almirola.

But Cindric caught on and dove back down low to block. Wallace clipped the left-rear quarter panel of Cindric’s car, but didn’t have the momentum to beat him to the line. Much like in 2018, tears followed. But these tears stood in contrast to the happiness of four years prior, stemming instead from disappointment.

Wallace composed himself in the minutes after the race. But he couldn’t stop watching the replays playing on the infield monitors, making the occasional pained facial expression and muttering words of disappointment between answers to the media on pit road.

“I’m going to be pissed off about this one for a while,” Wallace admitted. “I was happy on the first second place we got a couple years ago. This one sucks when you’re that close, but all-in-all, happy for our team, happy for our partners, and on to California.”

Auto Club Speedway will come around in just a handful of days. When it does, Wallace will be focused on the next opportunity to win.

But for one night in Daytona, the 23XI Racing star allowed himself to wallow in the misery of coming so close to a victory in NASCAR’s biggest race.

Penske Perfect

It’s hard to ask more of a driver than Team Penske did of Ryan Blaney in the closing laps of Sunday’s race. But he lived up to all expectations with everything at stake.

One year removed from a Daytona 500 that ended in a vicious crash between then-Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, Ford and Team Penske made plans to work together to avoid similar trouble.

It was under that mindset that Blaney found himself restarting to Cindric’s inside on the front row with two to go.

Blaney could have been forgiven for going all out for the win in that moment. He could have taken off, tried to get the better of Cindric and fought to block whoever was behind him. But he didn’t.

Instead Blaney took the restart slowly, allowing Cindric to pull in front of him. Then he pushed the rookie, refusing to make a move until off of Turn 4 when a Penske victory was all-but assured. When the pair made contact moments later, Blaney was the one that slowed and ultimately crashed, falling back as Cindric drove off to Daytona glory.

Each move was done by design, with one key goal – to make sure Penske capitalized on its opportunity to score a Daytona 500 win.

“I made the decision of I wasn’t gonna make a move until I was 100 percent sure that one of our two cars was gonna win, and one of our two cars were going to win and one of them ended up winning,” Blaney said afterward. “I was committed to him until I was 100 percent sure that one of us was gonna win and one of us did.”

It just wasn’t the one he would have hoped for.

Early safety test

The Next Gen car’s first airborne test came in the machine’s first Daytona 500 crash. 

Brad Keselowski was attempting to bump draft Harrison Burton in the late moments of Sunday’s opening stage when the push went awry, sending Burton spinning down into the inside lane. 

Burton then collided with William Byron and kicked off a crash that included Denny Hamlin, Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell, Alex Bowman and Kyle Busch. 

Unfortunately for Burton, the Wood Brothers Racing rookie also took the wildest ride in the crash. When his No. 21 Ford turned around, it was sent into the air and briefly on its lid before ultimately flipping back to its four tires. 

Burton emerged unhurt, but disappointed. He hadn’t seen a replay when he was interviewed after being released from the infield care center. So while Burton felt that Keselowski might have “got a little wide on my right side” to set off the incident, he hesitated to point any fingers. 

“I’d like to look back and see what happened,” Burton said. “I don’t know, I just got pushed and didn’t take it the right way – the car didn’t take it the right way or got pushed in the wrong spot. I’m not sure. I couldn’t really tell. 

“I was looking out front to see what I had to do next to side draft the next guy that was on me, so just a bummer. I don’t really know what we could have done different, but we’ll move on and get better from it.”

The crash also brought an end to one of the Daytona 500’s most challenging streaks. Denny Hamlin suffered his first-ever DNF in the Great American Race, suffering too much damage in the accident to continue on. 

“The 6 (Brad Keselowski) was pushing the 21 (Harrison Burton) and you could see the 21 was kind of getting out of control there, so you know the mindset was that you’ve got to back off but I think the 6 was just insistent on pushing him at all costs and eventually turned the 21 around,” Hamlin said. “Tough, you know, considering it was just for the stage. 

“We were kind of boxed in there where I noticed that something was going to happen, but I was boxed in, I was behind a teammate and I wanted to try to help. Again, just too aggressive pushing right there when they weren’t lined up and in control.”

Bad (Luck) Brad

Burton’s accident was only the start of Keselowski’s tough afternoon in Daytona.

Keselowski has kicked off his first season with RFK Racing in style, scoring a win in one of Thursday’s Bluegreen Vacations Duels. The Michigander entered Sunday’s race among the favorites to win and showed strong pace from the jump, too.

But on two separate occasions, attempted pushes from Keselowski resulted in disaster.

The first was Burton’s, an accident that surprised Keselowski. “I was just pushing and it just turned sideways and spun immediately out,” he said. “I don’t know what happened there.  It was a shame to see it. I hate it for (Burton). I was trying to help him win the stage and certainly didn’t want to see him spin out.”

Later on in the race, Keselowski was positioned to battle for the win when an attempted push of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. off of Turn 4 after a restart with six to go led to another crash, taking out Keselowski’s teammate Chris Buescher along with Stenhouse. Once again, Keselowski was perplexed, saying he was “just pushing” again and that the cars “weren’t even all the way up to speed.”

“I hate that the 17 got torn up,” he said. “I was trying to give Stenhouse a push there and I thought we could settle it amongst us three and clear with the top lane, but it didn’t come together.”

Through the controversy, Keselowski carried on. He sat fourth on the final restart, but found himself trapped a car-length back when Cindric pulled in front of Blaney ahead of him. Keselowski tried to lead the top lane to Cindric’s outside, but couldn’t get the run he needed to pass the Team Penske teammates.

“I thought down the backstretch we were gonna win the race,” he admitted afterward. But in the end the outside lane faded and Keselowski dropped to ninth, watching on as his replacement at Team Penske prevailed in the sport’s biggest race.

“I’m happy for them,” Keselowski said of his former teammates. “There’s a great group of people over there and they deserve all their success.”

Speedweek was a promising sign for Keselowski and RFK Racing, erasing the string of a disappointing outing at the Busch Light Clash. But it will leave some questions of what went wrong heading into the rest of the season.

Early Questions

All things considered, the Next Gen car passed its first major test, delivering a Daytona 500 that lived up to expectation in the sanctioning body’s eyes.

“Incredible finish, really great racing all day long,” NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell told NASCAR.com. “You start out thinking, ‘OK, are the cars even going to make it out there? How are they going to perform? What’s going to happen? Are they going to be safe in an incident?’

“All of those things played out. (I’m) really proud of the entire industry coming together. Seeing how the cars competed at the end was wild, a lot of fun and I think, just as a race fan, really entertaining. Hopefully the fans enjoyed it as well.” 

There were many positives to take from the race. But the Next Gen car’s debut left a few questions, too.

The biggest concerns were tied to the wheels. It took just one pit sequence for the first wheel lost on-track after NASCAR’s implementation of single-nut tires. Kaz Grala lost a wheel after his first stop with the newly-formed TMT Racing team.

Shortly afterward another tire was seen rolling along down the track, this time from Justin Haley. There appeared to be some sort of break in his right-front wheel that caused it. Tyler Reddick suffered what was believed to be a broken right rear toe link and spun to cause one of the race’s largest crashes in Stage 3.

Flat tires from crashes also seemed to be a concern. Without an inner liner present – the new tires don’t afford enough open space for them – drivers like Reddick and Joey Logano found themselves effectively beached in the infield grass. Their cars were so low to the ground that they became mired in the ground, unable to move without assistance.

“We have had some instances where there’s a lot of — like a lot of really tight tolerances on a lot of the parts on this new car, and if you look at the back of the wheel, there’s a lot of lug holes there that line up on the drive pins on the hubs,” winning crew chief Jeremy Bullins said. “A lot of times, when you have that many holes and that many lugs and very close tolerances on all that, we’ve had a couple — we took a set of wheels out of the rotations today because we made some tools to check them to make sure they were what they were supposed to be, and we pulled a set of wheels out and didn’t use them today because we were afraid they might not go on.

“It’s all new stuff, and it’s all very nice machined stuff, but when you stack up those kind of tolerances, we have seen some interference issues. That’s what we’ve all been hedging against, if you will, through some of the things we’ve done.

These are all small issues in the greater scheme of the day, the sort of minor gremlins that NASCAR can live with in the car’s first major test and work through moving forward. But their presence shows that there is still work to be done heading into the flow of the regular season.

Notes

  • Chase Briscoe’s third-place effort in Sunday’s race was the first top-five of his Cup career. Not a bad way to kick off his sophomore season with Stewart-Haas Racing.
  • The retiring Aric Almirola wanted to soak in every moment of what could be his final Daytona 500. You can’t do much better at that than lasting until the end and putting together a top-five run.
  • Speaking of retired drivers, David Ragan made the most of his Daytona 500 opportunity on Sunday, setting the fastest lap and putting together an eighth-place result at race’s end.
  • Speaking of retired drivers (again), Greg Biffle was less fortunate than Ragan. After making the show for NY Racing Team, Biffle suffered early issues and finished 64 laps down in 36th.
  • The streak… Is over. Denny Hamlin notched his first Daytona 500 DNF, ending a stretch of 16 years where he’d reached the checkered flag in NASCAR’s biggest race.
  • Michael McDowell couldn’t quite reach the front in his Daytona 500 defense, but he played the game right to stay in contention again. McDowell ended the race in seventh after a quiet, but solid run.
  • Formula 1 and Indianapolis 500 champion Jacques Villeneuve was quickly flushed out of contention on Sunday, losing the draft and falling a lap down after just 15 laps. The Team Hezeberg driver did stabilize from there, though. He finished just two laps down in 22nd.
  • This weekend saw a strange trend from the field. All three races saw a driver win both of the opening stages only to fall out of contention in Stage 3 after getting caught up in a crash. Martin Truex Jr. played the role of sacrificial stage winner in the 500, getting caught up in a late crash after inching past Joey Logano to claim Stage 2 and sweep the opening stages. Daniel Hemric accomplished the feat in the Xfinity Series, while John Hunter Nemechek played the unlucky role in Friday’s Truck Series opener.
  • Heading into the final lap of Sunday’s race, the top three drivers — Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski – all had something in common: they’d worked with winning crew chief Jeremy Bullins. “Just the experience of working with them, Ryan from a rookie in the Cup Series to having some experience to an experienced veteran like Brad, I would say I’m grateful for the lessons that I learned through all that, to be able to try to help somebody like Austin on this journey of moving to the Cup level,” Bullins said. “I’m grateful for everything I’ve experienced to be able to try to pass that along. I’m getting old. I’ve got to teach somebody how to do something.”

Daytona 500 Results

  1. Austin Cindric
  2. Bubba Wallace
  3. Chase Briscoe
  4. Ryan Blaney
  5. Aric Almirola
  6. Kyle Busch
  7. Michael McDowell
  8. David Ragan
  9. Brad Keselowski
  10. Chase Elliott
  11. Ty Dillon
  12. Daniel Hemric
  13. Martin Truex Jr. 
  14. Corey LaJoie
  15. Landon Cassill
  16. Chris Buescher
  17. Cody Ware
  18. Daniel Suarez
  19. Kurt Busch
  20. Cole Custer
  21. Joey Logano
  22. Jacques Villeneuve
  23. Justin Haley
  24. Alex Bowman
  25. Austin Dillon
  26. Kaz Grala
  27. BJ McLeod
  28. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  29. Erik Jones
  30. Kevin Harvick
  31. Noah Gragson
  32. Kyle Larson
  33. Todd Gilliland
  34. Christopher Bell
  35. Tyler Reddick
  36. Greg Biffle
  37. Denny Hamlin
  38. William Byron
  39. Harrison Burton
  40. Ross Chastain

Stage 1

  1. Martin Truex Jr.
  2. Brad Keselowski
  3. Todd Gilliland
  4. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  5. Joey Logano
  6. Austin Dillon
  7. Kurt Busch
  8. Erik Jones
  9. Chase Elliott
  10. Kyle Larson

Stage 2

  1. Martin Truex Jr.
  2. Joey Logano
  3. Bubba Wallace
  4. Brad Keselowski
  5. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  6. Austin Cindric
  7. Chris Buescher
  8. Kevin Harvick
  9. Kyle Larson
  10. Todd Gilliland

NASCAR Xfinity Series 

(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)

Race: Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner. 300

Track: Daytona International Speedway

Who Won? 

Austin Hill. The Richard Childress Racing newcomer shot past A.J. Allmendinger shortly before a caution on the final lap to score a season-opening win.

Recap

Top Stories

Snider’s scary shunt

Many wrecks at Daytona International Speedway have seen significant wrecks, enough to earn them a designation as ‘The Big One.’ But few have been as major as Myatt Snider’s catchfence-breaking crash on the backstretch in Saturday’s Xfinity Series opener.

Snider was thankfully okay, emerging from his own power sore, but with no major issues. He was ultimately cleared from the infield care center and expects to compete at Auto Club Speedway next week.

“It’s the last lap and everybody’s trying their best to push as hard as possible,” Snider said of the crash. ”I’m trying to keep as much momentum as I can get. I felt a push and I started feeling the car go right, and I’m like, ‘Crap. I might be along for a ride here.’

“And sure enough, I was.” 

Snider will quickly move his attention to Fontana, but the memories of his crash will arise in highlight reels and discussion for years to come. It was the latest example of just how bad a superspeedway crash can be, sending a host of drivers to the care center in what Tommy Joe Martins claimed was “like a MASH unit.”

“We were on the low line and I got stacked up,” Martins said of the wreck. “Wound up in the grass. By the end, I think I was already past the worst of it. But that was a pretty wild looking wreck from my point of view. It’s not something I want to be looking up at out of my window a whole lot.”

Jade Buford had a front row seat for Snider’s crash, essentially driving under him as Snider’s car flipped through the air. “It was pretty crazy,” Buford said. “That’s how last laps at Daytona go.

“It was definitely a first,” Buford later continued, noting that he’d seen the roof of Snider’s car ahead of him. “I even came on the radio and reminded my team. I (said), ‘I think a car just flipped over me.’

“It is what it is. I hope he’s perfectly fine. Cars can be repaired.”

Also watching on from a bit too close for comfort were Bubba Wallace and NBA legend Michael Jordan, whose bus was parked nearby on the backstretch. The bus took a piece of Snider’s car from the accident, but all onlookers were unhurt.

 

Statement of Intent

When Austin Hill arrived at Richard Childress Racing (RCR), he had just one goal: win races.

Team owner Richard Childress set an early goal of “at least” two wins – something he noted with Hill and the media after the race – but Hill’s ambitions are greater.

“I know (Childress), he made the comment in a meeting that we had before the season, he wanted me to win two races,” Hill said afterward. “Well, we got one under the book, and I expect a lot more than two to come, that’s for sure. He also owes me a little elk hunt. He told me if I won a race this year we’d go elk hunting, so I’m going to keep beating him up on that offer now.”

Hill’s arrival at RCR comes after breakout tenure with Hattori Racing Enterprises (HRE) in the Camping World Truck Series. Much like this RCR, he began the tenure with a Daytona win. The Georgian continued to contend in three seasons with the group, too, earning eight wins of three seasons.

But Hill had an Achilles heel during his time in the tour – the playoffs. Each season fell apart in the postseason for different reasons, leaving Hill without a Championship 4 berth in his three years with the Toyota squad. He acknowledged as much on Saturday, saying “the playoffs have kind of eaten me alive in a sense on the truck side.”

But playoff misfortune aside, HRE was still a championship-caliber program. Making the decision to leave the group was a challenge, even with the prospect of a step up to the Xfinity Series.

But RCR felt like the proper home for Hill, a move he could make on his own terms.

“I want to do it with the right team and right people and organization around me,” Hill said. “And I feel like Richard Childress and Richard Childress Racing is that type of organization that I wanted to be around because they’re very family oriented. I’m very family oriented, and that’s what I love about this team. They’re always there for you.

“I think that’s why this organization just works for me, and hopefully we can work together for a lot of years to come.”

Whether the pairing will work out long-term remains to be seen. But it couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start.

Just Short

The bad part of a two-car duel in the closing laps is that one of the competitors has to fall short of victory lane.

That honor went to AJ Allmendinger in Daytona.

The Kaulig Racing veteran led in the race’s waning moments but was overtaken by Hill just before the race-ending crash, resulting in his second-consecutive runner-up result at the iconic 2.5-mile track. He led 13 of the final 15 laps, but critically failed to lead the one that counted most.

“We got single file and I saw Austin (Hill) kind of move up to the top there,” Allmendinger said.“I’m still learning and trying to be better at not getting too far out in the lead there, but he just timed it perfectly.

“He backed up, and for the last 20 laps or so I’d been pacing myself off the top and saying ‘okay, how big of a run can he get?’ He just timed it to where that thing got a big push.”

Despite Hill making the right run to take the lead, Allmendinger thought that he would have a chance to pay him back in the run to the checkered flag. But the opportunity never arose.

“I actually thought I was gonna be okay,” he said. “I made (Hill) go to the bottom so I didn’t get a car to the outside of me.

“I thought ‘alright, if he goes to the bottom I’m going to have the momentum and side draft him and still win this thing.

“Unfortunately, as soon as he started to pass me I looked at my mirror and saw the big wreck behind me.” 

Such is the life of a front-runner at the World Center of Racing.

Notes

  • Anthony Alfredo’s Xfinity Series return was nothing if not eventful. The former Front Row Motorsports competitor in Cup fell two laps down early in the race after losing his right-rear window. It took nearly the entire race, but Alfredo finally got back to the lead lap late and salvaged a top-10… After playing a role as the pusher in Snider’s heavy last-lap crash.
  • For all of the off-track controversy around his sort-of-but-not-really sponsor, Brandon Brown can still deliver a solid drive when called upon. The former playoff contender snagged a 10th-place finish in Saturday’s race, giving himself a good early jump in the fight for a postseason spot.
  • A tip of the cap to Josh Bilicki. For the first time in 73 starts, Bilicki emerged from Saturday’s race with a top-10 result. The Wisconsinite came home in ninth, giving DGM Racing a good result to built on entering the 2022 season.
  • Jeremy Clements was taken out early when Drew Dollar lost control of his No. 18 Toyota at the exit of Turn 2 and spun into Clements on the outside lane. The one-time race winner didn’t mince words afterwards. “I got ran over by a guy that just has no experience,” Clements said. “You know, he got out of shape a few times (and) just wrecked us. I mean, you’ve got a lot of these inexperienced drivers out here that buy these good teams and fast cars and that’s what happens.”
  • Ryan Sieg had an eighth-place run in Daytona, which is actually a quiet night for him. But when you consider his four finishers of 27th or worse to start 2021, Sieg was likely happy to see the checkered flag with a decent result.
  • Could Riley Herbst be starting to turn the corner with Stewart-Haas Racing? After scoring just two top-fives in his first 24 starts for the team, Herbst has managed four in his past 10 races. Something to build on.
  • Playing the role of “early stage winner that gets junked late” on Saturday was Daniel Hemric. The defending champ led 38 laps and won a pair of stages but wound up heavily damaged en route to a 28th-place finish.

Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner. 300 Results

  1. Austin Hill
  2. AJ Allmendinger
  3. Noah Gragson
  4. Riley Herbst
  5. Justin Allgaier
  6. Sheldon Creed
  7. Anthony Alfredo
  8. Ryan Sieg
  9. Josh Bilicki
  10. Brandon Brown
  11. Ty Gibbs
  12. Ryan Truex
  13. JJ Yeley
  14. Landon Cassill
  15. Jeffrey Earnhardt
  16. Josh Berry
  17. Brandon Jones
  18. Ryan Vargas
  19. Jeb Burton
  20. Bayley Currey
  21. Kyle Sieg
  22. Myatt Snider
  23. Jade Buford
  24. Tommy Joe Martins
  25. Matt Mills
  26. Joey Gase
  27. Jesse Iwuji
  28. Daniel Hemric
  29. Joe Graf Jr.
  30. Sam Mayer
  31. Josh Williams
  32. Kyle Weatherman
  33. Shane Lee
  34. Brett Moffitt
  35. CJ McLaughlin
  36. Drew Dollar
  37. Jeremy Clements
  38. Caesar Bacarella

Stage 1

  1. Daniel Hemric
  2. AJ Allmendinger
  3. Riley Herbst
  4. Austin Hill
  5. Noah Gragson
  6. Ty Gibbs
  7. Justin Allgaier
  8. Ryan Sieg
  9. Brandon Brown
  10. Sam Mayer

Stage 2

  1. Daniel Hemric
  2. Ryan Sieg
  3. Sam Mayer
  4. AJ Allmendinger
  5. Justin Allgaier
  6. Brandon Brown
  7. Ty Gibbs
  8. Josh Berry
  9. Brandon Jones
  10. Riley Herbst

Next Up: A trip to Auto Club Speedway for the Production Alliance Group 300 on Feb. 26.

NASCAR Camping World Truck Series 

Race: NextEra Energy 250

Track: Daytona International Speedway

Who Won? 

Zane Smith. The Front Row Motorsports newcomer led as a last-lap caution flew to kick off 2022 with a victory.

Recap

Top Stories

Close to a Clean Ending

The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series opener at Daytona is traditionally known as a racer of attrition, filled with large cautions and surprises up front when contenders are lost to the wreckage.

That wasn’t the case in the race’s 2022 edition… At least not until the white flag was in sight.

Friday’s race was filled with action, passes and more than one sketchy moment as trucks darted to the inside or outside from errant shoves in the draft. But there weren’t any major wrecks heading into the race’s closing stages.

For a brief moment, it appeared the field would get to the white flag and complete the race without the usual wreckage. But just as the white flag went into the air, a push finally went wrong for the field.

Chaos ensued.

A massive accident was an expectation, so the wreck didn’t catch anyone off-guard. But what was surprising was just how long the crash took to unfold.

How did a field known in 2021 for many crash-filled events manage to string together such a clean event?

“You know, Landon Cassill came up to me (after the race) and he had a good theory,” Parker Kligerman told Motorsports Beat after the race. “Which was that some of those Toyotas were just so fast up front, they just controlled the lanes so well that it didn’t cause a lot of jumbling up of the lanes. I felt like you had a lot of veterans who were doing what we did in the beginning, sort of hanging out and working their way up when things settled down and handling comes into it little more.

“I just felt like the whole field did a really good job. I think there’s a lot of inexperience in that field, but a lot of drivers rose up to the occasion. ”

The overall performance of the field came as a pleasant shock for Kligerman, who entered the race with lowered expectations.

“I was surprised, because Talladega last year was. … Not good,” he said. “It was not an impressive display of driving. I was a little worried after some things I saw in practice, but everyone did a good job.”

Kligerman’s Unique Position

Kligerman was among the happiest drivers after Friday’s Truck Series opener – something he attributed to his unique position within the sport.

While many of the frontrunners in the NextEra Energy 250 will go on to challenge for playoff positions and the championship, Kligerman’s starts will be more selective. The prospect-turned-analyst competes part-time for Henderson Motorsports, giving him a few opportunities to chase victories and keep his racing dreams alive.

He tries to make the most of those limited chances. On Friday, that meant giving a strong push to eventual winner Zane Smith on the outside lane with hopes that it would bear fruit for him as well.

“I was like, ‘alright, I’m going to push this as far as I can go,’” Kligerman said. “And I went as far as I thought I could go. I saw the [Nos.] 98 [Eckes] and 99 [Ben Rhodes] break up on the bottom.

Things didn’t quite work out this time around. Smith dove to the bottom and Kligerman lost ground, settling for a fifth-place effort after a crashing Jason White and Kris Wright ended the race under caution.

Smith admitted to owing Kligerman a present after the race for his role in the No. 38 team’s victory.

Kligerman wouldn’t mind it being help with roles reversed at Talladega Superspeedway.

“I knew [Smith] was gonna do what he did,” Kligerman said.. “I would have done the same thing his position. I hope he can repay the favor somewhere else in the season. Maybe Talladega.”

Solid Start to a New Tenure

Zane Smith was in need of a fresh start heading into 2022.

He’d be hard-pressed to find a better one than his winning debut for Front Row Motorsports.

Smith endured a difficult 2021 season, struggling to find the top-five despite showing pace for GMS Racing after a host of setbacks over the year. He grinned out a playoff berth on points and bounced back in a major way with a Championship 4-clinching win at Martinsville Speedway, but lost the title to Ben Rhodes in heartbreaking fashion on the ensuing week for the second-straight year.

At the time Smith wasn’t sure if he would have a place to race in 2022. But when Todd Gilliland got the call up to Cup for Front Row Motorsports, team owner Bob Jenkins gave Smith a chance to shine for the team’s Truck program.

In his first race for the squad, Smith found himself celebrating a big victory at the World Center of Racing.

“That stuff always — that’ll scar you,” Smith said of his title losses. “But I don’t know, I guess I’m going in with the mindset of, I don’t know, third time is a charm. This is as good as you can start out a year.

“So dang cool to already be in the playoffs. It’s a huge weight off my shoulder, my team’s shoulder, sponsors’ shoulder, everybody.”

The past year hasn’t been easy for Smith. He admitted that last year he “thought I was going Cup racing” at this stage.  But after everything recent months have thrown at him, the Daytona winner is happy to stay where he’s at and try to rack up wins.

“I’m still not in a huge hurry to go Cup racing,” Smith admitted. “I’m having a ton of fun doing this. I know once you get to Sunday, it’s a whole other level and you’re not going to most likely win for a little bit, so while I can I’d like to fill up my trophy case.”

Silver Lining With a Touch of Gray

Tanner Gray was just happy to see the checkered flag in the start of his third Truck Series season.

The NHRA-turned-NASCAR prospect has been steadily improving during his time in the stock car ranks. But until Friday night, he’d never been able to find the right mix of luck and performance to reach the end of a superspeedway race.

That all changed at Daytona. The David Gilliland Racing driver put together a quiet night, slotting in fourth at race’s end for the sixth top-five of his young NASCAR career.

“Every speedway race we’ve been to, I don’t think I’ve even finished,” Gray said afterward. “It feels good to finally finish one and kind of have some luck go our way.”

The run continued a short glimpse of potential for Gray, who earned his only top-five of 2021 in the year’s penultimate race at Martinsville Speedway. He hopes to parlay the early results into additional success down the road.

“Last year, it was like one bad race,” Gray said. “You’d go to the next one and it was another bad race, and it’d just snowball. So when you come here and you run good, it sets you up good for the next weekend and for the rest of the year.”

Notes

  • The moment of caution for the Lap 99 wreck couldn’t have come much closer to the white flag. Check this out.
  • Let’s be real. Kyle Busch’s shirt was the real winner on Friday night.
  • Danny Bohn did it again. The part-time Truck Series competitor notched an eighth-place finish at Daytona to extend his streak of seasons with a top-10 on the tour to four years. That’s not bad for someone that only has 34 series starts.
  • Matt DiBenedetto’s Truck Series debut was a quiet one. The former Wood Brothers Racing driver stayed out of the spotlight and came home a quiet 10th at race’s end.
  • Ty Majeski had never sat on pole or led a lap in the Truck Series before Friday. He did both at Daytona, leading 21 laps before finishing a respectable seventh.
  • Corey Heim and Dean Thompson became a bit too acquainted early on, colliding on pit road and setting off disastrous nights that saw them finish 32nd and 36th, respectively.
  • Johnny Sauter was a non-factor in his run for G2G Racing, completing only 60 laps and finishing 34th.
  • Playing the role of “early stage winner that gets demolished late” in this race was John Hunter Nemechek. The presumptive championship favorite won both opening stages, but wound up 24th after the late carnage in Daytona.
  • Jesse Little put together a strong sixth-place effort to score his first top-10 in the Truck Series since 2018. A sign of things to come?
  • Tip of the cap to Colby Howard. He didn’t get the end result, but Howard was a genuine contender in his No. 91 Chevrolet, leading nine laps and challenging up front until the late crash relegated him to 30th.

Next Up: The Camping World Truck Series ventures to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 4 for the Victoria’s Voice Foundation 200.

Keep the Beat marching on. Support us on Patreon.
Become a patron at Patreon!
AJ Allmendinger Austin Cindric Austin Hill Brad Keselowski Bubba Wallace Harrison Burton Jade Buford Myatt Snider NASCAR Cup Series NASCAR Truck Series NASCAR XFINITY Series Ryan Blaney Tanner Gray Tommy Joe Martins Zane Smith