Conor Daly couldn’t even make it on the track for Daytona 500 qualifying. He nearly spun out in the first few laps of his Bluegreen Vacations Duel race. His No. 50 The Money Team Chevrolet couldn’t hang on to the lead draft and fell a lap down on speed after halfway.
None of it mattered in the long run.
A 17th-place finish, one lap off the pace, wound up good enough to advance into his first Daytona 500 after a late-race wreck wiped out his two competitors for the transfer spot.
“We took advantage of luck,” Daly admitted in his post-race press conference. “But I will take luck all the time because we got better and better as we raced.”
“Better” was a relative term early on in the Duel, because Daly’s No. 50 looked like its rear end was broken.
Daly compared it to driving over a supercross track, losing the lead draft immediately and nearly spinning out on every turn before the yellow flag came out for Justin Haley‘s side window on lap seven.
“I compare it to racing a go kart and you bend an axle,” Daly said. “That’s what it felt like. I guess the goal was just to drive through it … but that was something I had never experienced before.”
The crew tinkered with the rear of the car on the team’s first pit stop, making several changes and improving the handling somewhat. But Daly remained loose in turns 1 and 2, losing the draft and eventually a lap as it appeared Austin Hill was set to grab the final Daytona 500 spot.
All seemed lost until Kyle Busch lost control on the backstretch. A bad bump by Daniel Suarez sent Busch spinning in front of the entire pack, sparking a Big One. Travis Pastrana, driving the third open entry, couldn’t slow down in time, smashing into Hill and clearing the way for Daly to make the 500 field.
Among the 170 text messages waiting for Daly when he got out? One from Pastrana that said, “#yourewelcome.” Ironically, it was Pastrana who helped set Daly up with his current sponsor, BitNile.com, a partnership that led to the open-wheel star scoring a limited schedule with TMT, Floyd Mayweather’s part-time Cup outfit.
And TMT survived, somehow, an unlikely 500 participant for the second straight year after Kaz Grala snuck…
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