A few races get circled on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule when it comes out.
The season-opening Daytona 500, Charlotte’s 600-miler, Indianapolis’ Brickyard 400 and Darlington’s Southern 500 make the list because of their history. Throw in the championship race at Phoenix for obvious reasons, too.
While we are at it, add another — a dangerous, high-stakes race where one little slip could cause a standings-altering melee and ruin everything a team has built over 24 races across six months of racing.
That’s the Coke Zero 400 on Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway.
The previous two winners this season at what were once considered restrictor-plate tracks, Daytona and its sister-in-high-speed Talladega, were William Byron and Tyler Reddick — and both know the perils of racing in rocketing, tight packs.
Six months back in wintry Florida, Byron scored a four-lap shootout victory under caution after Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric wrecked at the end, handing the Hendrick Motorsports driver his first Daytona 500 victory.
Reddick’s Talladega triumph in April was one of 2024’s most harrowing finishes and typical of the type of breakneck speed and close racing that manifest at the two tracks.
Last week’s winner at Michigan, Reddick ran fifth off Talladega’s final turn, then stormed past Brad Keselowski after the No. 6 Ford and leader Michael McDowell created frontstretch chaos and piled up cars.
Something seriously significant is going to happen on the 2.5-mile, high-banked track in Florida’s summer heat Saturday night.
It’s just a matter of when.
Right away, like in the 1990 race on Lap 2 when Derrick Cope, Greg Sacks and Richard Petty triggered a 23-car pileup?
Or maybe the massive mayhem nine years ago when Austin Dillon’s airborne No. 3 violently shredded the catchfence in front of the grandstands as Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the checkers?
“It is pretty tough. That race is probably more challenging than any of them,” said No. 43 driver Erik Jones, who won the 2018 version of the 160-lap white-knuckler.
Dillon likely arrived in Daytona a little edgy.
His team’s Wednesday appeal was denied to overturn NASCAR’s decision to deny him a title berth after his rowdy Richmond run wiped out leaders Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin.
The Richard Childress Racing driver will have to win Saturday or on Labor Day weekend in the Southern 500 to be in the 16-car championship field.
Like Dale Earnhardt who made the No. 3 famous — “The Intimidator” was the winningest driver in Daytona history with 34 overall victories — Dillon knows a bit about winning on those steep banks.
Two of Dillon’s five career victories are the 2018 Daytona 500 and his championship-berth-earning win in the 2022 summer event when he was the only car on the lead lap and avoided a spectacular crash during rainfall.
He has done it before, though in the two triumphs, he led only 11 laps, including just the final one in 2018.
After a pair of entertaining races following the Olympic break, Daytona turns it up a notch in intensity with so much at stake and with danger lurking everywhere on the 31-degree-banked asphalt monster.
