NASCAR Feature: Power in Numbers: Can Chevrolet break the Ford monopoly at Daytona?
Photo by 360097 Sean Gardner/Getty Images
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Kurt Busch has already expressed his concern to the Chevrolet camp.
After all, as a former driver at Stewart-Haas Racing, the 2017 Daytona 500 winner understands the importance of being part of the Ford armada when it comes to drafting on restrictor-plate tracks.
Busch knows there is power in numbers and that the odds favor the Blue Ovals.
“The Fords put forth that effort at 100-percent level to work together as much as they can,” Busch said. “Penske, it's not just two guys, they have four. That's somewhat not thought of in the proper way. They have four strong cars. SHR, four strong ones. The Roush cars are always good. Then you have the Front Row Motorsports guys that get the ‘A’ engines from Yates for the restrictor plates.
“A lot of Fords out there. The Chevys are outnumbered in that sense. Yes, we do need to work together the best we can to win in numbers and have that percentage chance when it comes down to the end on getting a bowtie in Victory Lane.”
Busch is more concerned with his new team—Chip Ganassi Racing. Hendrick Motorsports found speed for its Chevrolets and posted the top four speeds in qualifying for the Daytona 500, with William Byron starting on the pole and Alex Bowman alongside.
All told, Ford has 13 drivers. Chevrolet has 15 cars in the mix. In addition to the two Ganassi drivers, there are four Hendrick competitors plus their two technical partners at JTG/Daugherty Racing. The defending Daytona 500-winning organization—Richard Childress Racing—bumped up its roster to four drivers with the addition of Tyler Reddick and Brendan Gaughan. RCR chances have improved with technical partners on the Welcome, N.C., campus: Bubba Wallace from Richard Petty Motorsports along with Ty Dillon and Casey Mears from Germain Racing.
“Reddick, they found a partner to run this race,” says 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon. “Tyler is a very capable driver, he's won here twice in the Truck Series and the Xfinity Series, and to get him in the field, this is a big race for any team. And to have three (additional) cars, it's really nice. I think it was a great call.
“You saw how the drafting was in the Clash (on Sunday). It'll be a little bit different when we get 40 cars out there and people splitting and doing things. Any time you have a guy that might…Bubba helped me win the race last year, so I guess, yes. When you have a guy that's behind you that's going to stay with you at the end of the race or in front of you that you can help to win the race, two is better than one, so, yeah, I guess it would be a positive for sure.”
Three years ago, the Toyotas showed their hand early in practice after the Duel 150-mile qualifying races. The four JGR Toyotas and Martin Truex Jr., then at Furniture Row Racing, discovered the speed of five cars hooking up in the draft. That year, Hamlin went on to win the 2016 Daytona 500.
If any manufacturer should be concerned about competing against the Mustangs, it should be Toyota with just five Camrys in the camp.
“The Toyota drivers kind of were the first ones to do that and show everybody how it could work,” says Martin Truex Jr. “With that said, it was still hard to make it work. We all had to end up in the same place which is difficult to do here. We had a plan and it somehow miraculously worked out. We all ended up at the front at the same time and were able to get together. The hardest part is getting together. Staying together is not that hard.
“For sure, we’re at a disadvantage now just based on pure numbers. The Fords especially have been really fast at the plate tracks the last couple of years with this particular package and now there’s so many of them that they’re all really competitive. They’re all really good at this type of racing with the stuff they’re running. The engines, everything about it I guess. They just have a good package for here. It’s difficult to deal with that. They’re not always all together, but when they are, they’re tough to handle.”
Ford Performance picked up on the trend and lined up their top cars from Penske, Stewart-Haas and Roush Fenway in the draft. They won the next three races at Daytona before Dillon broke the string last year. At Talladega, Ford has a seven-race winning streak.
If the Chevrolets work together, their effort would match that of Ford in size. With the added drivers, is a strategy in place for Sunday?
“If there is a plan, I haven't heard it yet, for Chevy. That's my answer,” Dillon said. “If we get our tails kicked in like we did at Talladega, it's going to look bad. But Daytona is a little bit different, I feel like, in the fact that handling is more in play, more often, where four cars getting in a line, the second and the third car in line probably aren't going to handle as good, unless you've done a really good job on your homework. It's hard to get everybody up there. What they did was so impressive. Their cars were unreal. They just led the whole race.
“I don't see that happening again. Penske did a really good job the other day I felt like of leading that pack, so that's kind of scary. But with 40 cars out there, things change, and I do think it's a good idea for us to get together and make some sort of game plan.
“We do a pretty good job of trying to pit together and stay on the same pit strategies, so that's something that will probably be talked about more and more as we get closer to the race, but yeah, we need to get together, I think, and work on that if that's how the race is going to go.”
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