One of the biggest stories regarding the 2024 Daytona 500 was the extreme fuel strategy that occurred throughout the majority of the day.
Drivers had reported running at as little as 50% throttle under green instead of racing. At one point, AJ Allmendinger was running down the lead pack by himself. Even more ludicrous was the fact that he had been running them down by as much as two seconds per lap.
Since the checkered flag fell, drivers have expressed their disappointment in the lack of racing in favor of saving fuel.
“This is probably to the extreme,” Erik Jones said after the race. “I wish there was something we could do about it, but it’s definitely frustrating.”
Jones wasn’t the only driver with frustrations. Denny Hamlin, Noah Gragson, Chris Buescher and Bubba Wallace have all gone on record stating their frustration with the extreme fuel saving that occurred throughout much of the race.
Elton Sawyer, senior vp of competition for NASCAR, told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that NASCAR was going to look into the fuel saving.
“Ultimately, we want to drop the green flag on the race and they’re racing as hard as they can until they drop the checkered flag,” Sawyer said. “There’s some strategy in between there, and we will definitely take a much deeper dive into this particular situation and the strategy that goes into it.”
Fuel mileage has always been a part of the culture of trying to win NASCAR races. Even the Daytona 500 has seen awesome fuel mileage finishes before, most recently in 2017 when Kurt Busch outlasted the likes of Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott to win it.
However, the frustration in fuel mileage is the slow pace that can be set. It’s one thing to save on a track such as Charlotte Motor Speedway by lifting earlier in the corner than one normally would to save fuel intermittently. But on a track like Daytona International Speedway, running half throttle for 190 laps doesn’t really promote racing at all — especially in a marquee event like the Daytona 500.
If there was any bright side to the nature of trying to save fuel the whole time, up until around 10 laps to go, there was only one caution for cause in the first 475 miles, which was for a big accident on lap 6. Following that, the typical train racing that fans are accustomed to on…
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