Speedweeks is in full swing with the Daytona Duels taking place earlier tonight at a windy, but dry, Daytona International Speedway. 

Multiple aspects of The Great American Race got showcased in the Duels, including an underdog proprietor in duel one and a wild bundle of strategy in duel two. Let’s start off with the former with California’s own Casey Mears. 

Winner: Casey Mears and Garage 66 

How ‘bout it? Took a sheer prayer and a catastrophe for it to happen, but after four attempts in four years, Casey Mears finally races his way back into the Daytona 500. It’s the 47-year-old’s 14th appearance in the race, coincidentally where he made his Cup series debut in 2003. 

The Bakersfield native is a part of a legendary family in the West Coast racing scene, the Mears Gang, who has helped bring hardware such as the Indy 500 back to California. Casey himself has won the Coke 600, and is a known name to any longtime NASCAR fan. 

It’s the first appearance at Daytona for Garage 66 since Timmy Hill finished 27th at the race in 2020. After three former failed attempts across six years, lady luck finally tipped her hat to the team. 

While Daytona gets plenty of flak for becoming a race where anyone can win, stories like these are what make that aspect tolerable. The look of elation on that team’s face as they made it in is what this sport is all about. 

Loser: RFK Racing 

Boy, it was all peaches and cream for the four Roush Fenway-Keselowski cars throughout the first duel. 

The team, aided by the help of Corey LaJoie in the open #99 Mustang, assumed the front of the field and used superior teamwork to lead the pack. That was until Bubba Wallace joined the party. 

Wallace flew up to the front of the field, as he often does at this track, but came up just a little too fast. The #23 got about a car length ahead of the pack and was given a huge push by Austin Dillon, getting him loose and starting a massive wreck, catching the #17 of Chris Buescher. 

Another incident during the final lap of the race would see LaJoie get collected and lose his opportunity, as well as Ryan Preece. 

Team owner Brad Keselowski said it best himself, he went from four cars in Sunday’s race to three, with two of them being wrecked. 

I have no doubt the team will recover during the main show, but to lose a drafting partner (and let’s be honest that’s about all LaJoie is) is a major blow.

Winner: Strategy! 

The second duel was extremely tame compared to the first. Drivers laid back and let the laps tick down as time went on, which resulted in some green flag stops that…were interesting. 

Now I’m sure the real race won’t be this disjointed, but we had teams looking extremely confused out there. One such example comes from the #88 of rookie Connor Zilisch, who pitted by himself for some reason and thus had to navigate joining an entire pack of cars by himself. 

Another great example was a small pack of cars approaching another who had just pit. The change in speed felt like watching an IMSA race, as drivers maneuvered around the slower cars and barely missed cautions. 

The sheer amount of yellows we usually get in todays superspeedway racing makes this sort of situation rarer than it should be. Seeing the difference in strategy as well as on track speed was very interesting, and is the type of stuff that makes the “making a left turn” joke pretty tone deaf. 

Loser: 23XI Racing

This entire speedweeks has been a bit of a migraine for Michael Jordan’s team. Besides the early speed of Corey Heim in qualifying, things weren’t great for either Bubba Wallace or Tyler Reddick. 

The two drivers seemingly brought boats in qualifying on Wednesday, both placing in the late 20s, and things didn’t improve tonight. 

As mentioned, Wallace found about two laps of time in front of the field before a lesson in physics sent him sideways and into the infield. He wasn’t able to recover and will start in 30th in the main race on Sunday.

Reddick kept it clean in his run in duel two, but wasn’t doing anything too special throughout the race. The #45 will end up starting 40th in the race himself. 

Jordan’s team will look to regain some spots throughout the 500, with the team hoping to find themselves closer to the rookie Heim to give him a little assistance. Only time will tell whether they get the opportunity. 

The Daytona 500 drops the green flag at 11:30 AM PST on FOX.