The 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is officially off and running. Zane Smith began his championship defense in strong fashion, winning his second straight race at Daytona International Speedway.
But the Daytona race was… lackluster, to say the least. Daytona is never usually an indicator of how the season will go for drivers, as anyone can win if they’re running at the end. But Daytona also gives drivers a chance to mesh with their new teams, crew chiefs, and spotters, so they can enter Las Vegas Motor Speedway with chemistry to get their season going and officially see what they have.
But Daytona was an event that saw more laps run under caution than under green flag conditions. The longest green-flag run was just 11 laps, as either a multi-truck crash or rain halted the race, and the latter caused the race to be called with just 79 laps of the scheduled 100 completed.
This had to have put a damper (the pun was kind of intended) on drivers’ spirits. Hell, it did for us as race fans, as we waited three months for NASCAR to return just to get an incredibly choppy race. Sure, the rain wasn’t NASCAR’s fault, as the rain was so light that it didn’t even show up on radar, but the drivers certainly weren’t too pleased at the pace of the race. Or the finish for that matter, as Christian Eckes even said that if Smith “Mickey Mouses his way into this, I’m gonna be so mad.”
Sure, Eckes and Smith are good friends, but there was no doubt Eckes had a fast truck that night, as he had won stage one with his new team, McAnally-Hilgemann Racing, replacing Derek Kraus in the No. 19. Eckes ended up third when the race was called. Despite his friendship with Smith, he still can’t be too happy and was probably left wondering what could have been.
In fact, Daytona left one driver happy, and the rest were probably wishing they could finish the race. But even bigger, drivers in new places such as Eckes, Nick Sanchez and Corey Heim were unable to gel with their new teams enough to be in a comfortable position when Las Vegas comes around next week.
In a way, Vegas feels like the official start to the Truck Series season because of how little overall track time they got at Daytona. While Smith’s win wasn’t a complete shock and doesn’t “shake up” the playoff picture like other winners in the past might have, the drivers will now get the chance to prove themselves in the series. We’ll get to see how well Rajah…
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