It’s Daytona Day, and as longtime readers know…we love the Daytona 500 very very much.
You don’t have to like NASCAR to love NASCAR. In fact, I think this is where most reasonable Americans land. Not every race is exciting. The sport’s a little hard to follow. But dammit, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was an all-time great.
I like NASCAR. But if you don’t like NASCAR, that’s fine. If you dislike NASCAR? Different situation. If you actively dislike NASCAR, something’s off. Those who actively dislike NASCAR need to do some soul-searching, starting with asking their parents why they raised a child so enamored with the smell of its own farts.
I’m often asked how to go about watching the Daytona 500. The best way to do it is to throw a party with moonshine and KFC, inviting 25 people and welcoming five guests to your home. I’ve only managed to do this once. The second-best way is to lay down on your couch and soak it all in.
Watching NASCAR is more like watching golf or the Olympics than it’s like watching football or basketball. You can take a nap. You can miss some stretches. There’s a peace that comes from the motors’ constant drone. The broadcast should show you any big highlights you missed, and what you really want is to lock in down the stretch, as the tension builds. That’s when it goes from nap-adjacent to exhilarating.
Most of the highlights, of course, are crashes. Superspeedway racing (Daytona’s a superspeedway, which means it’s really big and drivers don’t have to use the brakes at all to navigate its turns) lends itself to fireworks. This is good and bad. The bad side, of course, is the danger. The primary goal of every NASCAR race is for nobody to die. If nobody dies, it’s a good day, and we can enjoy all the mayhem.
Thankfully, there hasn’t been a death in 24 years. NASCAR’s done an amazing job figuring out how to let cars run into each other at 200 miles per hour without the drivers dying.
It’s ok to like the crashes. It’s good, even. Never erase the child in your soul. But you can’t outwardly enjoy the crashes until you know the drivers are ok. Those are the rules.
Speaking of those crashes, one of the good stories heading into today revolves around Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Junior’s mostly retired now, but he owns a team which races in the Xfinity Series, NASCAR’s highest minor league (you might remember it as the Busch Series). JR Motorports is trying to get into Cup Series racing. This year, for the first time, they tried to qualify for the Daytona 500, the race that killed Junior’s dad. They pulled it off, and Junior was visibly happier than even the driver himself, Justin Allgaier. After the feat, someone—possibly Jeff Gluck—asked Junior about his relationship with the speedway, given what happened there in 2001.
“I knew it wasn’t the track that took him, and I knew wherever he was, he still felt the same about Daytona.”
It’s a special place. It’s a special race. It’s a special day.
There aren’t any Earnhardts in this year’s field, and there’s no Jeff Gordon, and Jimmie Johnson’s just about retired too. There are always good characters in NASCAR, but this era’s are subtler than their predecessors.
Kyle Larson is probably the best driver in the entire world, not limited in any way to stock car success. Ryan Blaney is both handsome and a caricature of a NASCAR driver, with a sprint car tattooed across his ribs and a former Hooters model for a wife. Tyler Reddick is a short, scrappy guy, which makes his relationship with his boss—Michael Jordan—visually comedic. Bubba Wallace is a mercurial talent who’s dealt with all the shit you’d expect a Black driver to deal with in NASCAR these days. Chase Elliott’s distant, but he’s widely loved. Joey Logano’s mellowed out, but he’s widely hated. Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have become elder statesmen, each polarizing for different reasons. Shane van Gisbergen’s an Australian who used to drive Supercars down there ‘til he came to America for one race and won it. Erik Jones is a hard-luck sleeper. Chase Briscoe is a Midwesterner who got where he got with talent and a dream. Ross Chastain comes from a line of watermelon farmers. Corey LaJoie bet his kids’ college fund on his car to make this race. Christopher Bell still looks like a child. Brad Keselowski’s a dork of an engineer. Alex Bowman is disconcertingly self-aware. William Byron came up as a sim racer, basically turning video game training into a professional athletic career. There are others I’m forgetting or neglecting, but that’s a high-level look.
With rain in the forecast later this afternoon, they’re waving the green flag around 2:00 PM Eastern. The broadcast is on FOX. You don’t have to get KFC, but you should at least get Raising Cane’s. It’s only right to eat fried chicken and drink a coke while watching the Great American Race.
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