What to Keep an Eye on in the 68th Running of the Daytona 500

What’s Hapening?

The Great American Race is finally here! After a long offseason and some appetizer races building up to the main event, the NASCAR Cup Series is set to take to the wide, sweeping banks of the Daytona International Speedway for the annual season opener, the Daytona 500. There are a lot of storylines heading into today’s race. Here’s what you need to look for today.

• First things first: The start time of today’s race, which is set to air on FOX, was moved up one hour to 1:30 PM EST. That also moves the RACE DAY show to start at 11:30.
• The reason behind the race being moved up was due to threatening weather that is in the forecast for Sunday afternoon into the evening. With the race starting earlier, the hope is that they’ll get the race in before the weather moves in at about 7 PM.
• Kyle Busch and Chase Briscoe scored the front row during Wednesday night’s single-car qualifying session. The rest of the lineup was decided by Thursday night’s duels. Winning the duels were Joey Logano and Chase Elliott. They’ll be rolling off in the second row today.
• Drivers to qualify in were Corey Heim, Justin Allgaier, Casey Mears, and B. J. McLeod. Jimmie Johnson will start 31st. He invoked the Open Exemption rule, forfeiting prize money and points. Drivers who failed to make the race were Corey LaJoie, Anthony Alfredo, Chandler Smith, and J. J. Yeley.
• In the duels, Toyota and Ford looked strong. Chevrolet looked pretty sporty as well with their new Camero noses. It’s a tough call to predict a winner at this point. Blaney and Hamlin are currently the odds-on favorites to win with a +1,100 chance.

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