The Daytona 500 is by far the most important race of the year for NASCAR and especially FOX Sports.
The tone set in Daytona can continue through the entire first half of the season. It’s one of the reasons why the weather issues are so devastating for NASCAR. Chances are, it’s going to snowball for the next couple of months, potentially lowering the NASCAR Cup Series’ reach. Remember, not everyone is a diehard fan.
The postponement came early, before I even got out of bed. By the time I was enjoying my Honey Nut Cheerios, the plan was to run at 4 p.m. ET Monday, Feb. 19.
As you know, Monday’s race will probably be best remembered for two things. The first is the way the race ended, with Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric colliding and NASCAR’s button-press determining the winner.
I hate when this happens. The angry fans trot out conspiracy theories, and seemingly no one other than Hendrick Motorsports (in this case) ends up happy with the outcome. A much messier version of what we saw Monday occurred in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season opener in 2005 when Bobby Hamilton was declared the winner over Jimmy Spencer.
The same procedure that ultimately gave Hamilton the win in 2005 was used to give William Byron the win Monday. It doesn’t appear that they deviated from using video evidence to determine the finishing order. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a timestamp of when the caution came out on-air. NASCAR posted this picture from the moment of caution after the race.
However, based on previous occasions, it seemed like FOX didn’t do quite as much. In 2021, a big wreck ended the race early. FOX showed this computer graphic that showed the positioning of the leaders at the moment of caution.
At the time, I made reference to the move in my critique, but didn’t really give an opinion of it. Looking back, this was a good move. Heck, if you have to have all this Ghost cam stuff and GPS technology, why not use it for something like this? I wish we had it Monday.
The other notable thing is that everyone intentionally ran at half-throttle for a good chunk of stage one due to the placement of the first caution. The result was some of the slowest racing for the NASCAR Cup Series at Daytona International Speedway that has been seen since the late 1960s.
This was bizarre to…
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