The field for Sunday’s Great American Race is now set. And if the two Duels were any indication, the Daytona 500 grid was assembled not with a clipboard, but with a flamethrower.
Duel One had more drama than a summer Shakespeare festival performed at 190 mph. On the bubble were Corey LaJoie, Chandler Smith and Casey Mears — three men chasing one open invitation to America’s biggest stock car party.
For most of the first 60 laps, it was a Ford convention led by Roush-Fenway Keselowski Racing. Ryan Preece paced the field early as the RFK quartet formed a tidy blue-oval barricade at the front. The plan was simple: protect LaJoie, the car that needed to race its way in, keep him insulated from the chaos, and deliver him safely to Sunday.
It was a lovely plan.
Until fuel stops — and reality — intervened.
Green-flag pit stops began around lap 44, and that’s when everything unraveled. Casey Mears, mired near the rear, charged in too hot and clipped Noah Gragson. Both spun. Mears then parked his Ford in the infield grass and spent what felt like half a presidential term spinning the tires before clawing back to pit road. A lap down, seemingly finished.
When order briefly returned, Joey Logano led Chris Buescher, Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney. With 11 laps to go, attention shifted from the race win to the knife fight between LaJoie and Smith for the final transfer spot. Smith edged ahead late. Hope flickered.
Then Daytona happened.
With four laps remaining, Bubba Wallace surged to the lead, only to be turned after contact from Austin Dillon. Wallace spun up into Logano and back down the track. Behind him, Smith, Buescher and William Byron were collected. Buescher and Byron were done. Smith’s hopes of racing his way into Sunday evaporated in a cloud of tire smoke.
Overtime followed. Logano and Blaney — teammates at Team Penske — controlled the restart. LaJoie was positioned safely near the front when, heading into Turn 3 on the final lap, he was shoved up the track. Daniel Suarez was turned, sweeping up Smith yet again. Cars scattered like bowling pins.
And somehow, improbably, Mears slipped through it all.
When the dust settled, LaJoie’s car was wrecked. And Casey Mears, driving for a 10-person team owned by Carl Long, was in the Daytona 500.
Mears called his miraculous escape in the last crash a “little bit of power of prayer.”
“There’s a lot of that going on in the car,” he added with a smile. “Just couldn’t thank everybody enough for getting us here to begin with.
“Yeah, I had an issue on pit road. I got a runner around the outside. I figured I’d stay on the gas no matter what happened. When I saw him spinning and I missed the first guy, I thought okay, good. Then I hit — was it the 9 I hit square? Anyway, I hit somebody square. And I knew when I hit him flat it didn’t tear up the car too much and I was going to be able to get back. But I didn’t know who was in front of me still, whether or not we made it. All the guys started going nuts on the radio.”
Keselowski, who finished fourth after watching his carefully constructed strategy disintegrate, could only shake his head.
“We did everything we said we were going to do,” he said. “Got all four cars to the front. Ran a pretty good pit cycle. All hell broke loose. Things kind of got separated. Ryan Preece got shuffled. Couldn’t keep the bottom lane super tight the way I wanted to. There was a wreck down the backstretch. That got the 17 car.
At the end I’m not really sure what happened. Somebody got in the back of Corey. Just really disappointing. We were in a spot to get him in the race. To go from having four cars in control of the race to three of ’em torn up and only one of ’em in the top five is quintessential Daytona.”
In the end, after RFK had dominated much of the night, it was Logano and Blaney who finished first and second, Logano crediting his fourth career Duel win to the pit crew.
“Nick Hensley, our gas man, did a fantastic job getting us in position out of pit road,” Logano said. “Coleman Pressley up on the roof giving us great information. My teammate Ryan Blaney being committed and working together. It’s nice when everything works out the way it’s supposed to.”
If Duel One was Shakespeare, Duel Two was almost suspiciously tidy.
The second race belonged to Chevrolet, and that Bow Tie brigade was led by Chase Elliott. Chase Briscoe, already locked into a front-row starting spot for Sunday, led the first 38 laps in his Toyota before a slow green-flag pit stop dropped him into the pack and out of contention.
Suddenly, the race win was up for grabs.
Ty Dillon, Carson Hocevar, Riley Herbst and even Anthony Alfredo — one of the open cars fighting his way in — all took turns at the front. It was competitive, tense, but remarkably clean.
With fewer than 10 laps remaining, Elliott decided he’d had enough of the musical chairs. He muscled his way to the lead and then put on a blocking clinic worthy of a coaching video, holding off Hocevar to win. Four Chevrolets finished in the top five. Sixty laps. No cautions. Hardly any drama at all.
“A great way to get the blood pumping for sure on a Thursday night,” Elliott said. “There was a lot going on those last handful, really ever since we came off of pit road after the cycle, we were getting after it. It was a lot of fun.”
For Alfredo, the mission wasn’t a trophy. It was survival. He finished ahead of BJ McLeod and JJ Yeley to secure the final open spot in Sunday’s Daytona 500 field.
“I definitely don’t want to be in that position,” Alfredo said of having to race his way in. “Making it on time is a lot easier. This is for the third time. It’s really cool (tearing up). My career has had a lot of ups and downs. You never know when you’re going to get another shot to race on any Sunday, especially the Daytona 500, The Great American Race.”
So the grid is complete. Ford drew first blood in chaos. Chevrolet answered with precision. Underdogs survived. Favorites stumbled. Prayers were answered.
But, because this is Daytona and nothing is ever simple, there’s an update.
Anthony Alfredo’s celebration didn’t survive inspection.
After racing his way into the Daytona 500 field in the second Duel, Alfredo’s car failed post-race inspection and was disqualified. That ruling strips him of the transfer spot he believed he had secured Thursday night.
The final open position in Sunday’s Great American Race now goes to BJ McLeod, who finished behind Alfredo on track but inherits the berth following the disqualification.
So in the span of a few hours, we’ve had a miracle escape from the grass, a Shakespearean implosion, a clinical Chevrolet showcase — and now an inspection plot twist.
And now, at last, the Great American Race can begin.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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