DAYTONA, Fla. -- If you are a regular visitor to our beloved ESPN NASCAR page, first off, thanks. I've been here for a while now and it's always great to see y'all. That's always especially true on this day, the stock car holiday that is Daytona Speedweek, also known as Great American Race Eve. Now, my people, please join me for a group hug with the second group I'd like for us to address together.
Welcome, NASCAR Newbies! Daytona Diaper Dandies! You Startup Stock Car Students who are stuck in the snow, still nursing post-Super Bowl hangovers and looking for a ginormous sporting event to satisfy your big-game appetite. Well, how about the event we have long referred to as Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing?
On Sunday afternoon, the 67th edition of the Daytona 500 will take the green flag with a 41-car field packed with names you know, names you might know, names you've never known and a lot of names that you definitely should know. So, exactly how are you going to learn all of that and all of them before the big race begins? That's where we come in, with our annual Great American Race Cheat Sheet. Bullet points and paragraphs designed to make you seem like you were born with Sunoco Green 15 fuel coursing through your veins and used a spark plug as your baby rattle -- don't actually do that, all you new parents.
So, put in some earplugs, strap on some Gargoyles, shout "Raise hell, praise Dale!" and read ahead as we present our annual Daytona 500 cheat sheet to print out, hide in the palm of your hand and then holler out random facts to your friends that make you seem like you've been watching NASCAR since Fireball Roberts was racing. And yes, that's a real name. He won this race in 1962 en route to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
See? You're already learning stuff!
Five favorites for the Daytona 500
Denny Hamlin is a three-time Daytona 500 champion, the most recent coming in 2020, less than a month before the world was turned inside out. If he earns a fourth, he will trail only Richard Petty (you've heard of him, even if it's just from the fact that he's "Mr. The King" in the Pixar Cars movies) when it comes to all-time wins in the sport's biggest event. Petty won it seven times. (That's how you end up being known as Mr. The King.) Hamlin drives for Joe Gibbs Racing (speaking of Super Bowls, Gibbs won three as Washington's head coach) and also co-owns Team 23XI. Who is the other co-owner? Michael Jordan. (If you don't know that name, just log off.)
I did my annual Thursday evening stroll of pit road asking drivers, "Who do you think will win that isn't named you?" and the most mentioned names were Hamlin, 2023 Cup Series champ Ryan Blaney, defending series champ Joey Logano, who won this race a decade ago, 2022 series champ Kyle Larson, and Larson's Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott, who just two weeks ago won NASCAR's preseason Clash exhibition event at Bowman Gray Stadium, a flat quarter-mile bullring that is the polar opposite of the massive 2.5-mile, high-banked Daytona International Speedway.
Five more to watch
The next five most mentioned during my paddock walk-and-talk was defending Daytona 500 winner William Byron (another Hendrick driver), two of Hamlin and MJ's drivers at 23XI, Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace, who won his Duel 150 qualifier on Thursday night, driver/owner Brad Keselowski and fellow former Cup champ Kyle Busch, who between them have won 99 races, but are a career oh-fer in the Great American Race.
But what if I like bad guys?
Busch isn't the Darth Vader he used to be, but he still receives his fair share of boos during the popularity contest that is prerace driver introductions, when everyone in the race walks across a stage in front of the grandstand. That always happens as racers get older. Darrell Waltrip, Rusty Wallace and even Dale Earnhardt were showered with boos at the height of their careers but became beloved by pretty much all.
The current leading candidate to become the next NASCAR Thanos is Carson Hocevar, who is the 22-year-old reigning Cup Series Rookie of the Year. Thanks to run-ins across multiple NASCAR series, the Michigan native has thus far been considered by his older racing peers as only slightly less huggable than a porcupine carrying a jellyfish.
Wait ... Busch has never won the Daytona 500?
It's true. Still. That's the bad news. The good news is that he has great company.
· Busch: 63 career wins; 0-for-19 in Daytona 500. Best finish: 2nd, 2019
· Keselowski: 36 career wins; 0-for-15 in Daytona 500. Best finish: 3rd, 2014
· Larson: 29 career wins; 0-for-11 in Daytona 500. Best finish: 7th, 2016 and 2019
· Elliott: 19 career wins; 0-for-9 in Daytona 500. Best finish: 2nd, 2021
· Martin Truex Jr.: 34 career wins; 0-for-20 in Daytona 500. Best finish: 2nd, 2016
Everyone on that list has a Cup Series championship trophy at the house, but no Harley J. Earl Trophies (that's for winning the Daytona 500, named for a legendary car designer and it has a giant silver spaceship-looking race car bolted to the top of it and looks super cool). It's a safe bet that everyone on that list will one day be enshrined in the NASCAR Hall, but one much sooner than the others. That'd be Truex, who retired from full-time racing at the end of last season but is back at Daytona in a part-time ride after dramatically racing his way into the field during Thursday night's Duel 150 qualifying races.
Speaking of the Hall, we say it every year and it is still true, the place is packed with guys who swung and missed at Daytona. "Texas" Terry Labonte, little brother Bobby, Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin and Tony "Smoke" Stewart finished their careers a combined 0-for-125 at the beach. Ricky Rudd, who was just inducted into the Hall one week ago, was 0-for-29.
Speaking of part-timers
Truex also has great company when it comes to guys who will be in the 500 that are racing legends, but not full-time Cup Series racers. It begins with a two-time Daytona 500 winner, Jimmie Johnson -- who is now a team co-owner with fellow seven-time Cup champ Mr. The King -- will be behind the wheel of his No. 84 Toyota, one of only two races he'll run this season (the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte is the other). Also in the field is a car owned, but not driven, by Johnson's former teammate, another two-time Daytona 500 winner, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Earnhardt's JR Motorsports (pronounced "Junior Motorsports") has had tremendous success in the Xfinity Series (think Triple-A baseball), much of it with driver Justin Allgaier. On Thursday night, Allgaier raced his way into the field in dramatic fashion, transferring from his Duel 150 via a late dash, putting Dale Jr.'s first-ever Cup car into the race (a car sponsored by country megastar Chris Stapleton's whiskey ... and yes, Stapleton will be at the race on Sunday).
"Nowhere else, do we celebrate like we do, just making the race, crying tears of joy, but this place," Earnhardt said on Thursday night. "Nowhere means more to me and nowhere means more to the sport."
Finally, if you are an IndyCar fan or perhaps a devotee of "Dancing with the Stars," then you will also recognize the driver of the No. 91 Wendy's Chevy. It's Helio Castroneves, one of the quartet of four-time Indy 500 winners and, yes, also the guy who won the mirror ball trophy in 2007 in a banana yellow suit.
Reminder: This guy will be in the #DAYTONA500 field on Sunday. (The one in yellow, not the Giant.) pic.twitter.com/9TwIpCHwSb
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) February 14, 2025
Chris Stapleton?!
Yes, and the singer of "Tennessee Whiskey" (thus he now makes whiskey) is just one of a cavalcade of stars who will be at Daytona. Earnhardt let it be known on Thursday night that Stapleton was deeply involved in the car's paint scheme and during the 150 qualifier was blowing up Dale Jr.'s phone ("Why are we changing tires?!").
Also in attendance will be team 23XI co-owner Jordan, and Pit Bull, who co-owns Trackhouse Racing and will also perform a prerace concert. Sunday's grand marshal of the Great American Race will be, naturally, Captain America, aka Anthony Mackie of "Captain America: Brave New World," and driving the pace car will be Alan Ritchson, star of the "Reacher" TV series. The only concern there is whether Ritchson can fit into the car. You may not know this, but race car drivers are typically small in stature. Ritchson is 6-foot-3 and 245 pounds with pecs bigger than most Cup drivers.
Three more things you can shout out to make you seem really dialed in to Daytona ... because "Three for Earnhardt"
"It's the Wood Brothers' 75th anniversary in NASCAR!"
It was two years ago that NASCAR celebrated it's 75th anniversary. Last year, it was Mr. The King's family that spent the season commemorating their 75th year of racing. Now it's the turn of Petty's longest rival, the famous No. 21 Fords fielded by the family from Stuart, Virginia, now driven by Josh Berry. You want to know about the Woods? Read this story I wrote in 2016 with team founder Glen Wood, standing on the very Daytona Beach sands where he once raced.
"That's right, they used to race on the actual Daytona Beach!"
It's true. There have been speed machines blasting over the sands of Daytona Beach since the early 20th century, when massive rocket-looking monsters used to set land speed records on Daytona's hard-packed sand. That eventually gave way to motorcycle races and early stock cars, which would hammer down the rough blacktop of Highway A1A and then wheel it out onto the beach and race back north, dodging other cars, the tide and flocks of seagulls. They didn't move off the beach until NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. built Daytona International Speedway in 1959.
By the way, you can still drive your rental car on Daytona Beach, but don't think you're gonna do like Cole Trickle and Rowdy Burns headed to dinner in "Days of Thunder." The speed limit on the beach where Major Henry Segrave went 203.7 mph in 1928 is now ... 15 mph.
"They're gonna wreck!"
Save that one for the final ten laps. Trust me. And you're probably going to shout that one twice.
Parity, from the rising talent level of young drivers (not to mention their questionable youthful fearlessness) to the race cars that they now drive, the "Gen 7" machines that are, at their core, spec rides, means more teams are in the mix late. Add that to the choked engines and aerodynamic drafting, the "Big One" -- or, more accurately, "Big Ones" -- have become the norm here. So, when the race has ten laps to go, chances are we're still a long way from the checkered flag.