- Three-time runner-up Bubba Wallace craves a visit to Daytona Victory Lane
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Kyle Larson will start on the pole for Saturday’s all-important Coke Zero Sugar 400 NASCAR Cup Series race after rain at Daytona International Speedway on Friday forced cancellation of qualifying for the final regular-season race.
Larson won last Sunday at Watkins Glen and topped the Daytona field according to metrics, which by rule are used to order the field in case of a cancellation.
Regular-season champion Chase Elliott will start beside his Hendrick Motorsports teammate on the front row. Joey Logano and Daniel Suarez will take the green flag from the third and fourth positions.
Given the withdrawal of Kurt Busch from Playoff competition because of lingering concussion symptoms, there are now two Playoff spots available in the final regular-season race. Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. currently hold positions 15 and 16 on points, with Blaney maintaining a 25-point edge entering Saturday’s race.
Truex will start 12th in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 and Blaney 15th. But it’s not as if those drivers don’t have something to worry about. Any one of 13 drivers below them in the standings could steal one of the remaining Playoff spots with a victory.
Seven of those 13 competitors—Aric Almirola, Brad Keselowski, Erik Jones, Justin Haley, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Michael McDowell and Austin Dillon—have Daytona victories on their resumes.
Also part of the group of 13 is 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace, Kurt Busch’s teammate. Wallace has three runner-up finishes in 10 Daytona starts, including the last two races at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.
Chris Buescher doesn’t have a points win at Daytona, but he and teammate Keselowski won their respective Duel 150-mile qualifying races at the track in February. Buescher starts eighth—closest to the front among eligible drivers below the Playoff cut line.
“I guess I can’t say I’m shocked by the way this weekend is starting,” Buescher said. “We definitely knew today was pretty rough on radar. I guess with that it does give us a pretty good starting spot for Daytona, but if there’s any race that’s not track-position sensitive, this is it.
“That being said. It’s good to have a good spot. I know we’re going to have a fast race car… We’ve got to be smart about it, we’ve got to be clean and take the speed that we know we’ll have and make something out of it.”
Three-time runner-up Bubba Wallace craves a visit to Daytona Victory Lane
In 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace’s five-year full-time NASCAR Cup Series career, he has four runner-up finishes. Three of them have come at Daytona International Speedway. He has finished second in the last two races at the historic track, and he was runner-up in his first ever Daytona 500 in 2018.
However, Wallace doesn’t necessarily consider his past success at the track a true indicator of his chances going forward.
“Like maybe five years ago, it would be like, ‘Man, we deserve a win here.’” Wallace said. “Five years to work on that. Now, it’s like you don’t deserve anything. Let’s go out and earn it. No matter if you finish second, how many times we’ve done it, we can still blow up or we could still break something. You don’t know. And so for us it’s just (important) to not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s focus on what we need to do.
“It’s just making sure you’re there for the last—I always say five laps, but we may wreck 10 times in five laps—so just make sure you’re there for the last two laps and set yourself up for being one of the first four cars,’’ Wallace added. “That’s what we need to focus on. Let’s get up that point.”
Wallace comes to Daytona ranked 20th in the standings, and his only shot at advancing to the 2022 Playoffs is to win Saturday night. The 28-year old has earned four Top-10 finishes in just the last six weeks, including a runner-up at Michigan.
Source: Holly Cain / NASCAR Wire Service[table=3978]Failed to Qualify: None
(i) Ineligible for driver points in this series
* Must Qualify on Time
# Denotes Rookie
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