The start of America trying to figure out what it’s going to do through all those long months without football begins immediately after the Super Bowl, and the first of the seasonal antidotes arrives this very weekend.
The Daytona 500 hits our screens Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app), an annual extravaganza that has its own special place on the calendar and a sense of unrivaled uniqueness.
If you’ve been, you know there’s nothing quite like it. If you haven’t — a situation that I’m about to rectify this weekend — then it’s time to either add it to the sporting bucket list or, if it’s already on there, get organized enough to actually tick it off.
No event mixes the past with the future quite so intriguingly. Any speed-based discipline, by its very nature, has cutting edge technology at the core of its competitive soul. Yet Daytona is much more about tradition and timelessness, which is the bigger reason the 500 is sold out for the eighth straight year.
The feast of horsepower by the Florida coast has more in common with the Super Bowl than you’d think. There are vast numbers of people for whom football’s big game is the only pigskin-flavored contest they will watch all year.
Similarly, NASCAR has a devout and dedicated following, but those loyal ranks are joined for Daytona by the casual and the curious, who sense an opportunity to enjoy something different.
Different it certainly is.
“There’s nothing like it,” 2007 Daytona 500 champ Kevin Harvick told me this week. “For the audience beyond the typical NASCAR fan base, it is something special that you can’t fully describe until you’ve seen it.”
Martin Truex Jr., Bubba Wallace among favorites
Bobby Labonte and David Ragan discuss the favorites to win the 2023 Daytona 500.
It is different in that the signature race of the year in the NASCAR Cup Series is the first one, a sporting quirk that’s somewhat delightful for its strangeness. No preamble, no messing about, no buildup, just get into the meat of the action and give one driver a monumental lift to start the campaign.
The race revolves around its history, but isn’t always kind to the big names.
Kyle Busch is a two-time series champion who has won virtually everywhere on the circuit, but he has never won this race in 17 tries. Martin Truex Jr., the 2017 series winner, counts 18 fruitless attempts, having missed out by just 0.11 seconds seven years ago. Brad Keselowski is 0-for 13, and nearly had it in 2021, blocked by then teammate Joey Logano on the final lap.
“It’s just not happened yet for me,” Busch told reporters. “Some guys, this is the only race they ever win. Other guys, they win it two or three times. It’s the Super Bowl of our sport, and it’s hard to accomplish this one.”
Meanwhile, for the last two champions, Michael McDowell and Austin Cindric, their Daytona triumph has been their only win at top level.
That unpredictability is one of the race’s charms. Richard Petty won seven times here but good luck trying to guess the outcome in recent years. In a race where everyone is desperate to win, and where anything can happen, well, anything often does.
For the crowd, the week is about more than just the drivers, even though NASCAR fans get fired up and outraged on behalf of their favorite like no other.
This is where people go to watch motor racing, but plenty else besides, a festival where the diehards and the passersby are shoulder-to-shoulder, eating and drinking and camping and glamping and partying.
NASCAR is in the midst of necessary change while needing to remain cognizant that familiarity is part of what brings people back. NEXT Gen cars. Old-school traditions.
There are exciting developments afoot for NASCAR, like bouncing off a highly-successful preseason exhibition at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and preparing for a street race in Chicago. Yet the sport, and this race, will still lean heavily here into the feel-good throwback memories of Dale Earnhardt winning his only Daytona 500, now 25 years ago.
Dale Earnhardt’s legendary win
Bob Pockrass takes a look back at the 1998 Daytona 500.
The people come for how it makes them feel and what it reminds them of. And because, no matter who your favorite is and why you chose them, watching fearless drives move ferocious vehicles at ridiculous speed is entertainment, raw and immediate.
