Rookie wins The Daytona 500, a New Generation Begins

The 2022 NASCAR Season is officially underway. The much anticipated Daytona 500 has come and gone and I figured I could sit down for a few minutes and discuss my thoughts on this year’s Daytona 500 and Speedweeks.

First off, we saw Zane Smith win the truck series season opener for Front Row Motorsports. Then we saw Austin Hill get his first career Xfinity Series win after a scary incident from Myatt Snider on the final lap. I’m glad Snider was ok after that, he got hooked, then the rear end of his car picked up off the ground and tagged the catch fence, which completely ripped his car apart. Even to where Matt Mills actually hit the engine that came out of Snider’s car. I’m glad no one was hurt after that. It was certainly a scary incident and haven’t seen anything like that since Austin Dillon’s crash at the 2015 Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.

Then we got the 64^th Running of the Daytona 500. A race that many race fans have been anticipating due to the debut of the NextGen car. Now overall, the race itself was pretty good. Things got pretty interesting in the end, the car made a good debut and it was put to the test with some of the wrecks that we saw on Sunday. One big example being Harrison Burton’s flip at the end of stage one. The car was pretty intact and held up well. Even though after looking at the replay a few times, it felt like the car picked up off the ground kind of easily. I thought this was going to be a more calm race with everyone trying to preserve their equipment but it looks like I was wrong on that part. Not to mention we saw a lot of pushing too, even at times it almost looked like we had tandem drafting as well when two cars were able to hook up and push. Going back to that Harrison Burton crash, he saw him get hooked by Brad Keselowski while being pushed. We saw some pretty big wrecks like any other Daytona 500, but I will also say that Ford definitely came out on top this weekend. They were dominant in the Duels and worked well together in the Daytona 500. Not to mention both RFK Racing Fords made a very good impression by sweeping the Duel races on Thursday night but also going out and running well until the end of the race. Even at the end, you still had guys up there like Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe, Brad Keselowski, and the eventual winner, rookie Austin Cindric. In which, let’s talk about that.

How about Austin Cindric? He was strong all race long and he put the famous Penske #2 in victory lane at the Daytona 500. I’m pretty sure this is the first rookie to win the Daytona 500 as well. I would say Trevor Bayne in 2011, but he ran a partial schedule. In this case, this is a driver who is attempting for Rookie of the Year and he has definitely shown he belongs in the Cup Series. Austin Cindric is going to win a lot of races for Mr. Roger Penske. It was definitely a wild start to the NextGen era, but a great start. A new car with a rookie driver that definitely looks like a future star of the sport definitely sets us up for what we can look forward to with this new generation car. Now of course there are some new car bugs that I think will occur during the first bit of the season. For instance with the new car, instead of the traditional 5 lugnuts, now it’s just one single lugnut. We saw a couple of instances of the wheel straight upcoming off of a car from Kaz Grala, and a tire coming off of Justin Haley’s car. We also saw Ryan Blaney’s crew struggle at one point trying to get a right rear wheel on during pit stops. I always wondered with all of the instances of the loose lugnut issues in the past and always wondered how long it would take when someone would lose a wheel. Looks like it didn’t take long. Overall, still, I thought it was a great race, it was very exciting and overall I like what the new car has to offer so far and I can’t wait to see how it runs on other tracks as the season continues. Here we are, a new generation of NASCAR.

NASCAR heads next week to the Auto Club Speedway out in Fontana, California for the first time in two years. The track did not hold races in 2021 due to pandemic concerns, as their races were replaced by the Daytona Road Course.