3 car! Unfortunate he had to wreck Almirola to win it. They do sometimes miss crucial spots when they cut away live to different cams, but almost always come back with a slow-mo replay to see what exactly happened. Rememberable Daytona 500 for sure.

20th Anniversary of Dale Sr. winning Daytona...almost forgot. And Junior just retired. That is spooky.

17th anniversary of his death too. And winner is grandson of Richard Childress.

Wallace finishing second was a great story, and he seems like a very cool guy. But even weekly no hopers like Matt DiBenedetto and Brendan Gaughan were running top five at the end on Sunday because it is a plate track.

I am not sure about Wallace being the Tiger Woods of NASCAR when he had no wins and just six top fives in 85 career starts in the Xfinity series.

Tiger Woods was Tiger Woods because he kicked everyone's ass and was the best player in his sport by a mile.

Love Bubba's performance this Daytona Speedweeks, but yeah I wouldn't be surprised if this is his best finish all season.

I think he's got strong plate track equipment since they're aligned with Roush and Ford, and Stenhouse has had really strong cars at specifically the plate tracks, I don't doubt that they've identified those races as their best chances of winning a race and gone to work extensively to be fast there.

Now that said, they certainly could've improved the overall speed in their cars everywhere, but that remains to be seen, and is not highly likely imo. They're in the same boat as the Childress cars imo and I'd anticipate them to drop off after this week at least somewhat, unless they've made some drastic improvements they won't be competing for wins regularly, but are certainly capable of getting top 10's and making the playoffs.

Speed in your car is just too big of an advantage to overcome as a driver, no matter how much talent you've got, if you don't have the car you don't have a chance. So, in Bubba's defense he was never in elite equipment at the Xfinity level compared to say an Erik Jones or the cars that Kyle Busch climbs into. But!... those guys have that elite equipment because they've shown to be very talented and fast drivers. It's still possible to be that talented and just not have gotten the chance yet. Bubba could be in that category, but I'm not convinced the 43 is going to have the overall speed in it for him to show much at this level, at least not this year, maybe they can build their program Truex style and get there, that would be cool.


It turns out to be the most interesting debate of how much of it is the car and how much of it is the driver (and how much of it is overall team, crew chief, resources devoted etc). The prime example of this is about to be Almirola taking over Danica's equipment this year, and I have a feeling it's about to look pretty bad for Danica's nascar skills compared to how good of a car she was in. I mean he was just leading the Daytona 500 on the last lap, she's never done anything remotely close to that. The other interesting ones to keep an eye on are Bowman, Byron, and Jones. Especially Bowman since Junior was notorious for having detractors for not winning enough.

Truex was Tiger last year, he honestly should have won half the races. Kyle Busch and Larson were like Mickelson and Sergio.

I wouldn't anticipate Truex to be able to sustain having the fastest car though, there's just too much rule change and other teams going to work on getting faster, the margins are just too small. And, the cars this year are incredibly different than the last 2 years. No ride height rules, skewing the rear-end. I hate the backend on these cars, wish they wouldn't have changed it, but I think maybe they did some testing and found it improved the ability to pass which gave us a really good Daytona 500.

I don't think there is any question that Almirola is going to make Danica's performance over the course of her NASCAR career look pitiful.

If I had to power rank the young guns into tiers right now:

Tier 1) Larson
1a) Elliott, Blaney

Tier 2) Jones, Bowman, Suarez

Tier 3) Wallace, Byron, Austin Dillon

Tier 4) Ty Dillon, Buescher
4b) Lajoie

Ooops Petty aligned with Childress which is Chevy ^^^^ up there. So that's been a really successful move 1,2 finish at Daytona, maybe they have figured something out. All the Chevy's have the new Camaro ZL1 front end. Keselowski has talked about this incessantly that Toyota has had an aerodynamic advantage on front downforce last year, Ford is the only one that hasn't changed their front-end look.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...rop/351842002/

23% ratings drop, wasn't going up against anything at the time either.

fwiw I don't think they can fix this as all the interesting people aren't racing anymore.

I think if NASCAR were a stock now would be a time to buy actually. I think this younger generation gives a lot less ****s than other crops which can create drama/rivalries. Racing needs that. If you ever went to a live race when Jeff Gordon was at his prime racing with Dale Earnhardt, WOW at the prerace introduction reactions.

Bubba Wallace's comments in regards to Denny yesterday is a preview of the drama racing sometimes needs. Sure this type of super speedway racing is more than likely to force breed drama and reaching for Gordon/Earnhardt peak interest is ambitious but I'm curious how this season plays out with this young crop.

Can't say I'm surprised at the ratings drop the first year without Junior. They also ran way better commercials for it last year, and had the debut novelty of Monster.

I was more surprised at how packed their venue was.

Yikes, just 36 cars entered for the Cup race at Atlanta -- and the Daytona 500 winner entered without a sponsor.

I know the Cup races used to only start 32-34 cars on the short tracks as late as the 1980s, but it has to be as least that long ago since a Cup race had so few cars entered.

It is not even the small field that is troublesome, IMO, the back 8-10 cars each week are not even remotely competitive anywhere other than the plate tracks.

I dunno. I am an old guy (45) whose parents started taking him to races at just a few months old, and I have never been more pessimistic about the long-term future of NASCAR/the Cup Series.

NASCAR has alienated so many long time fans in recent years, and those fans are not being replaced by younger fans. I think attendance/television ratings are going to be really ugly this year at a lot of places.

TBD just means they haven't picked which sponsor/paint scheme they're going to go with yet. 3 car is definitely sponsored, this happens a good amount early in the week.

I could definitely see that as well. I'm 30 and we used to have season tickets to Richmond, Bristol, the Rock and Martinsville.

Part of the issue is some of these tracks are downright ****ing boring these days and NASCAR clearly overextended itself. When they decided to put those extra high seats at Richmond I thought it was one of the dumbest things imaginable.

They've also made the mistake of not preparing for life after Jr. Their hand is now forced to promote other drivers so still wanna see how it plays out. Sport may have to hit that bottom that you refer to unfortunately.

The NBA does a great job of actually promoting their athletes/stars and not always making it about the brand. The rest of professional sports needs to learn a thing or two in that department.

I was a big fan of NASCAR like 20 years ago when they had those really interesting short tracks like the Rock and several others which I can't even remember now, but my interest has declined over the years because there are too many races now at too many boring tracks.

And of course it doesn't help that there are very few if any "big" personalities still racing.

Also I hated the "playoff" thing from the get-go. It's gimmicky and just not a good fit for racing imo.

I think losing "personalities" is mostly not the cause of the decline. That has been happening since always. When I was a kid it was the Pettys, Earnhardt, the Allisons, Yarborough, Pearson, Elliot, Martin, the Jarretts, the Waltrips, etc. The sport continued to be popular as they all left one by one. Only in the last ~decade have we seen this steep decline. I think it's the youngs doing Other Things Besides Watching NASCAR.

I freely admit that Jr. retiring probably will have an effect this year, though.

I watched most of this race in a pub full of NASCAR fans and almost all of them complained about the stages. "There are enough cautions as it is, why are they adding more?" and similar comments were heard in plenty. All the moves they've made like this have made it worse rather than better imho.

I agree they need more Kyle Busch throwing haymakers at Logano moments. But more than that, like you said, drivers that don't give a **** and will say how they really feel about a guy without holding back.

Yeah, I don't get the stages thing at all. They think that making the races *longer* is going to improve their product? smh

The field is very top heavy for wins barring fuel mileage plays, rain delays, and plate tracks. It would be nice to have a bigger pool of capable cars. But, even back to the 43 car fields there was always cars that had little to no chance, and it seems sponsors have figured that out thus the drop off in field size. Why they aren't able to get their car to a respectable level I have no idea.

I think smaller fields are fine that doesn't concern me 36 to 43 won't matter if quality of product etc is there.

That's reasonable to be pessimistic, but the running theme that nascar is going to struggle drop off die has been recycled for over a decade now by older disgruntled fans that dug their heels in on the way things were and hated the changes that were made, they would love nothing more than to see the sport fall flat on it's face without their support, but it just hasn't happened. It's not new at all and the older threads echo a lot of the same sentiment.

I don't think it's likely that attendance is any worse than in previous years where it's already been bad at certain tracks, but the fact that this Junior-less Daytona International was a packed house leads me to believe it will be about the same. Some of these places absolutely need to get cut down to 1 race and 1 race only though, and explore some new tracks or bring back old ones.

There's so many factors in play for ratings, who's to say cord-cutting major networks isn't playing a role. Again, not surprised by this in a rebuilding time for them.

Do people like this new format where they race twice or whatever they do?

I'd like to elaborate on this since last year it has become less gimmicky than any year previous. Last year, Truex was awarded regular season champion for the first 26 races (yes there's a regular season champion now). The points differential that he carried into each segment of the playoffs made it very easy for him to make it into the final 4 at Homestead. He would have needed to DNF at least twice in 3 races...and even then he might have still made it.

That is a massive difference than in years past where points would reset, they do not reset in this system, you carry all of your regular season points accrual into each round for the playoffs. The final race at Homestead is the most unpredictable point where the best car all year can lose, old point system guys will hate it, but it guarantees a high pressure situation for the Championship every year.

I'm a fan of the stage racing. Gives more drama throughout the race(even if it's manufactured), rewards people who have had solid days but might not have gotten the finish they deserve, and it breaks up what is usually an extremely long, boring event.

People that complain about NASCAR and it's rules changes are going to complain regardless. They've been miserable since Sr died, and keep comparing today's racing to the 80s and 90s. They're mad the cars don't look like the one's at the dealership, they're mad there's not a fist fight in the infield after every race, they're mad at "today's sissy drivers" because "Sr never would've never allowed that to happen", they were mad because Kenseth won a championship without winning a race(or was it 1 win?), they're mad a playoff system was put into place that rewards winning instead of just racking up top 5 finishes, and they're mad about every change to the rules or the cars, regardless of how much it improves the racing or driver safety. They didn't like pack racing at plate tracks, then they didn't like when changes lead to the 2x2 racing, now they don't like plate racing again. "Just take the plates off and let them run wide open like real men!!! herp derp".

In case it wasn't clear before now, this rant has no purpose other than to complain about the complainers. Even though I don't watch full races like I used to, I still follow and enjoy the sport. Biggest issue I have had is how hard it is to pass. Clean air has become too important, and it sucks seeing faster cars unable to pass slower ones because the slower one out front has the cleaner air.