Daytona 500 schedule and how to watch 2024 NASCAR Cup opener

The world-famous Daytona 500 will kickstart the 76th season of NASCAR racing where Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney will commence his championship defense.   

Drivers will tackle 500 miles around the illustrious Daytona International Speedway which, just less than one month ago, hosted the enthralling Daytona 24 Hours where Porsche Penske Motorsport won by 2.1 seconds ahead of Cadillac in a grandstand finish on its 3.56-mile road course. 

But from the week commencing 12 February it will be time for America’s stock cars to face the historic Florida venue’s 2.5-mile, high-banked oval with Ricky Stenhouse Jr as the defending Daytona 500 winner.  

Stenhouse Jr is one of seven Daytona 500 winners on this year’s grid, yet Blaney is not one of them – having come extremely close and even been put in the wall by his Penske team-mate Austin Cindric on the dash to the finish line in 2022 – so will the newly-crowned Cup champion finally clinch victory at the famous speedway? 

When is the Daytona 500?  

• Date: Sunday 18 February
• Time: 2:30pm ET

The opening round of the 2024 NASCAR Cup season, the Daytona 500, starts at 2:30pm local time on Sunday 18 February.

But before the Daytona 500 is qualifying on Wednesday, and the Duel races that set the grid behind the front row on Thursday, leading up to Sunday’s main event. 

How does qualifying work for the Daytona 500?

Qualifying for the Daytona 500 is unlike anything in motorsport, particularly Formula 1 where everything happens on the same weekend.

On the Tuesday before, a random draw takes place and this decides the order cars will take to the track for Wednesday’s qualifying. The final 20 spots though are given to the 20 highest scoring drivers from the previous year, because there is an advantage to setting a hot lap later due to track evolution.

Qualifying for the Daytona 500 is a single-car, one-lap format. So, each driver gets one flying lap around the tri-oval and the two…