Christian Eckes-Zane Smith Friendship Teases ‘Mickey-Mouse’ Win at Daytona

Smith also understood the bizarre circumstances surrounding how Friday night’s race played out. Leading three times for 17 laps, he was in the right spot when the rain just refused to go away, red flagging the race for over an hour before officials had no choice but to call it.

But don’t mistake that for luck. Smith had a strategy that simply worked out in his favor, looking to avoid wrecks and rookie mistakes by some of the new drivers in the Truck Series before asserting himself at the right time.

“Sure enough, they were not too smart in the beginning,” Smith said. “And I just kind of hung around right behind them and waited for their mistakes. And obviously, I didn’t know the rain was going to come and shorten the race, but I knew that how we kept coming in and topping off that we were setting ourselves up to lead that final stage. That’s what we did.

“Obviously just fell a little short of finishing the thing. But I feel like we would have had a great shot regardless.”

For his part, Eckes’ joking frustration stems from the fact he’s come so close at Daytona only to come up short. Friday marked his second straight top-five finish here, leading a total of 28 laps in those races. Add in another 31 laps led at Talladega Superspeedway the past two years, only to come up empty there, too, and the 22-year-old has a whole lot of close, but no cigar on his resume.

“I feel like I’m going to have to write a book one day, a thousand ways how to lose a speedway race,” Eckes said. “Last year, we lost two of them on a green-white-checkered, this year we lost them due to rain.”

But Mother Nature doesn’t…