After a long rain delay Austin Dillon ended the NASCAR night at Daytona with a big move to beat Bubba Wallace out for the win in their 125-mile duel races.
It came after Aric Almirola captured race 1 earlier in the day, but a bigger controversy arose in NASCAR’s process of choosing the four non-chartered drivers to compete on Sunday.
Ty Dillon was all set up to finish as the highest, non-chartered driver and clinching his spot in the big show. However, he was passed late in the race by Ryan Preece.
Preece had locked himself into the 500 on Wednesday, by being one of the fastest two non-chartered cars in qualifying.
The spot for the 500 from each duel was only guaranteed to the highest finisher of the independent cars, so when Dillon finished behind Preece, the spot is defaulted to the third-highest qualifier from Wednesday — Austin Cindric.
Now, this brought outrage for many reasons, one being Cindric finished the first duel race a lap down. That issue was largely due to him speeding on pit road and serving a pass-through penalty during green-flag action.
Cindric, in my opinion, has a car more than capable of racing his way into the big show. The way it happened is what was suspect there.
Now, another portion of this can be blamed on the charter system NASCAR has in the rulebook right now. Without that, the slower cars more than likely just wouldn’t have qualified their way in.
But then, what happens if Bubba Wallace wrecks in a duel and misses the race.
I understand the reason to point fingers in different places, but think this is a format issue for the duels that just needs changed.
In the second race, we saw more heartbreak in drivers trying to qualify their way in, but this time it didn’t spur from a formatical interpretation.
The cars were circling the track with five laps to go. Noah Gragson and Garrett Smithley were running side-by-side for the final spot in the 40-car lineup for Sunday.
Smithley got into Keselowski (or vice-versa) and it resulted in a multi-car accident.
It took damage to both drivers’ cars and ended each of their respective chances of qualifying for the race, giving the spot to Kaz Grala instead.
The controversial mistake from Garrett Smithley that ended Noah Gragson's night. #NASCAR
Judge for yourselves on this one.
🎥 @NASCARONFOX pic.twitter.com/kbHTfMLV8W
— Connor Ferguson (@cfchangs9) February 12, 2021
Now, the big part of this accident as it pertains to the eventual Daytona 500 victor was the wreckage collecting William Byron.
Aside from Ryan Blaney and maybe Wallace, no one on the track during the second duel looked as good as Byron had in that No. 24 car on Thursday, and that’s regardless of the paint scheme on the side.
Byron will drop to the rear of the field with a backup car, as may Grala and others, too. Although, Byron fans could conceivably be wondering “what if,” if the young up-and-comer doesn’t win this thing on Sunday.
Below is the lineup for this year’s Great American Race, kicking off at 1:30 p.m. CT on FOX.
2021 Daytona 500 Starting Lineup
1. Alex Bowman
2. William Byron (will go to back with backup car)
3. Aric Almirola
4. Austin Dillon
5. Christopher Bell
6. Bubba Wallace
7. Ryan Newman
8. Kevin Harvick
9. Joey Logano
10. Kyle Busch
11. Ryan Preece
12. Chase Elliott
13. Kyle Larson
14. Ryan Blaney
15. Daniel Suarez
16. Corey LaJoie
17. Michael McDowell
18. David Ragan
19. Jamie McMurray
20. Kurt Busch
21. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
22. Chris Buescher
23. Matt DiBenedetto
24. Brad Keselowski
25. Denny Hamlin
26. Martin Truex Jr.
27. Cole Custer
28. Joey Gase
29. Tyler Reddick
30. Chase Briscoe
31. Tyler Reddick
32. Derrike Cope
33. Quin Houff
34. Ross Chastain
35. Cody Ware
36. Anthony Alfredo
37. Josh Bilicki
38. B.J. McLeod
39. Austin Cindric
40. Kaz Grala
