A sellout crowd and hundreds of thousands of viewers at dwelling will watch 41 drivers goal to win , the Daytona 500, on Sunday.
Bump-drafting, slingshot passing and big pileups are seemingly in retailer for Cup Sequence rivals on the 2.5-mile Daytona Worldwide Speedway in Florida.
Right here’s what you want to know earlier than the inexperienced flag drops. Protection begins at 1:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
Dodging the rain
Whereas the Cup Sequence and different decrease divisions have beforehand raced with rain tires on a moist observe, Daytona’s high-banked, three-story-tall corners forestall this at full velocity –– and rain is within the forecast for Sunday.
A 60% probability of showers is anticipated within the afternoon. Situations ought to clear as day strikes to nighttime.
Ought to a rain delay current itself, the observe has lighting fixtures which permit for evening racing because the racing floor would want round 1-2 hours to dry after showers clear.
To try to get as many laps accomplished as doable, NASCAR has moved up the beginning time by one hour, with an anticipated inexperienced flag at 2 p.m. ET.
Very like baseball, a race is taken into account official as soon as it reaches its midway level (100 of 200 laps). If the race is unable to restart Sunday earlier than making it to midway, the race would choose up on Monday, when skies ought to be clear. If the race hits lap 101 and rain washes out the remainder of the occasion, whoever was main when the delay began could be declared the winner.
Setting the sphere
Chase Briscoe, in his first race within the No. 19 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, received the pole in qualifying Wednesday with a median lap velocity of 182.745 mph. Austin Cindric, who received the 2022 Daytona 500 in his rookie season, certified second.
To find out the remainder of the beginning subject, two 60-lap warmth races often called Duels had been held on Thursday. The drivers within the first race obtained odd-numbered beginning positions for the Daytona 500 based mostly on the ending order – the second race, even-numbered beginning positions.
Bubba Wallace, driving for 23XI Racing co-owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan, received the primary Duel and can begin third on Sunday. William Byron, who received final 12 months’s 500, completed runner-up and can begin fifth.
Within the second Duel, Erik Jones had seemingly beat Cindric to the end line side-by-side on the ultimate lap as a multi-car pileup broke out behind them. However as a result of Cindric was inches forward of Jones when the warning was displayed, Cindric was declared the winner. Since Cindric already certified on the entrance row, Jones will obtain the winner’s beneficiary of beginning fourth on Sunday.
Different fan favorites and their beginning positions embody:
Chase Elliott, the 2020 Cup champion and winner of NASCAR’s Most Well-liked Driver award seven years operating, will begin seventeenth.
Denny Hamlin, a three-time winner of the five hundred, begins eighth.
Ryan Blaney, the 2023 Cup champion, begins sixteenth.
Joey Logano, the defending Cup champion and a former 500 winner, begins tenth.
Tyler Reddick, final 12 months’s common season champion, begins eleventh.
Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup champion searching for his first 500 victory in his twentieth try, begins twenty first.
Kyle Larson, the 2021 Cup champion and likewise trying to win his first 500, rolls off twenty second.
An Indy champion arrives
Whereas a well-recognized face to many automobile racing followers (and longtime viewers of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars”), four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves can be making his NASCAR Cup debut Sunday.
Castroneves will begin forty first – the final place – within the No. 91 Chevrolet courtesy of an Open Exemption Provisional, a brand new characteristic from NASCAR to present drivers from different auto racing sequence an opportunity to race in a one-off look. The Brazilian was thirty ninth in preliminary qualifying and was concerned in a crash within the first Duel, sending him to the rear for the five hundred.
“I discovered a lot,” after his Duel exit Thursday. “I find it irresistible. Unlucky we’ve got to take the provisional, that’s not what we needed however we are going to, and in the long run I’ve extra to study.”
Castroneves shouldn’t be the one huge identify at Daytona making a visitor look. Former Cup champions Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr., each of whom retired from full-time competitors, every certified their method into the race and can begin thirty ninth and fortieth.
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