Larry Mac: Daytona 500 shaping up to be one for the ages
Three days of on-track activity for 2016 Daytona Speedweeks are now in the books. We had practice last Friday, the Sprint Unlimited was run Saturday evening and then we had qualifying for the Daytona 500 on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday of this week are what's called "dark days," which means the track is closed and there's nothing happening either day on the race track.
Some teams elect to go home and work at the shop. Some teams go back home and relax until things start back up because starting Wednesday, it's non-stop until the Daytona 500 on Sunday.
I saw nothing but positives come out of our first three days of Speedweeks. Probably the only negative is they sure tore up a lot more equipment in the Sprint Unlimited than I would have liked to see. Of the 25-car Sprint Unlimited field, I believe there were only two cars -- Joey Logano and Kyle Larson -- that didn't have some type of damage to their cars. Even our race winner, Denny Hamlin recovered from damage to his car to give Joe Gibbs Racing their fourth Sprint Unlimited win in the last five races.
Daytona 500 qualifying continues to be an amazing story, not only in our sport, but across all sports. This is our biggest race of the year. You hear us repeatedly say this is NASCAR's version of the Super Bowl. Amazingly, three out of the past four years the Daytona 500 pole has been won by a rookie, and Sunday was no different. Three years ago it was Danica Patrick, then Austin Dillion in 2014 driving the iconic No. 3 car and now rookie Chase Elliott in the equally iconic No. 24 car.
Chase became the youngest driver in Daytona 500 history to sit on the pole at only 20 years old. Is there a better storyline?
He replaced four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon, who as you know, is now part of our FOX NASCAR team. So Jeff was in the TV booth and actually predicted that Chase would win the pole. The storylines don't end there. His dad, NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, is a two-time Daytona 500 winner plus he also won a Daytona 500 pole in 2001.
So we are off to a tremendous start. Also, I have to mention that while we can tell you about it and you can look at pictures of it, you really have to make plans to come to Daytona to see the new Daytona Rising. It's going to be hard to even duplicate something like this. I know others will try and top it, but this thing is simply phenomenal. I've been blessed to have the ability to attend Super Bowls and Olympic venues plus other sporting facilities, but Daytona's new motorsports stadium trumps them all.
So hopefully we can keep all this positive momentum rolling. Being the weather aficionado that I am, I'm thrilled to say for the rest of the week, it looks like what folks call "Chamber of Commerce" weather. The forecast calls for beautiful skies, awesome temperatures and the best part, a big ol' zero percent chance of rain from Wednesday through Sunday.
It really doesn't get any better than that to kick off our season with the biggest race of the year!
