4 Burning Questions: Should Drivers Change Their Superspeedway Strategies?

1. Is handling now a factor at Daytona?

In superspeedway racing, pushes gone wrong usually cause more problems than any sort of handling issues. While that especially rings true for Talladega Superspeedway, Daytona International Speedway has always had a slight handling component that plays a factor in how the race unfolds.

It starts with the fact Daytona is a slightly smaller and much narrower track than Talladega. A tighter radius and less room for errors change the visuals for the drivers and cause them to turn the wheel just a little more to the left.

Talladega also has more forgiving transitions in and out of the banking. The Daytona frontstretch especially seems to jump out and cause a couple of crashes each year.

This year, however, there might be an extra factor at play that would cause handling hiccups: the surface.

Before its repave in 2011, Daytona’s surface had a ton of character. Cars would oscillate up and down over bumps in the corner, but two potholes in 2010 caused the makeover.

Over the past decade and a half, the dark asphalt has grayed again, and cars are getting more and more sketchy across the transitions. 

In the Duels Thursday night (Feb. 13), cars on the inside line looked very nervous from the time they dropped off the final turn and down the frontstretch. The following night, turn 4 claimed a trio of trucks and led to even more slips and slides. Rajah Caruth had this to say in an X post:

In some cases I wasn’t wide open*. But regardless handling mattered at a speedway, and as hard as it was, it was fun!

— Rajah Kirby Caruth (@rajahcaruth_) February 16, 2025

Handling normally matters a slight bit at Daytona, but an ever-aging track surface means drivers will have to be extra careful timing their pushes as the laps wind down Sunday night.

2. Do teammates prevail in the Great American Race?

Manufacturer cooperation is always a talking point when superspeedways roll around. The Fords normally provide the best example of OEM teamwork, and the Team Penske trio are the best of the blue ovals.

Thursday night, Austin Cindric and Joey Logano were especially efficient, and it resulted in a victory and 10 extra points for the No. 2.

While the Fords work well together, Chevrolet traditionally has a numbers advantage. In this year’s Daytona 500, the bowties have 17 cars, versus 13 for Ford and 11 for Toyota. 

The Chevy bumpers don’t quite align right, and the teams just can’t seem to stick together quite as well. Still, they almost always find a way to be in contention at the end. In fact, Ford and Chevrolet have finished 1-2 in four of the last five superspeedway races.

Then there’s Toyota. Its teams have just one superspeedway win in the 18 superspeedway Next Gen races. That win came last year, however, and Toyotas swept the 2024 Daytona Duels and won another this week.

In the past few years, Penske, RFK Racing and Front Row Motorsports have been the best at staying together and dominating the race. When crunch time comes around, though, the drivers get separated – even taking each other out at times – and give the win away.

Teamwork will be important to lead the Daytona 500, but only the best-prepared drivers will be able to take their team – or a teammate – to victory lane.

3. Should drivers consider changing their superspeedway strategies?

Would you rather lead at the white flag, or do you want to be in second? That might be the better question to ask because it is inevitably asked at each superspeedway race. 

In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Jesse Love continued the Richard Childress Racing hot streak in the season opener, avenging a parts failure on Austin Hill’s machine. Drivers like Sheldon Creed and Taylor Gray consistently chose to push Love, trying to station themselves for a run at the lead on the final lap.

That run never came, because the caution flew just after the white flag. In fact, three of the last four season openers have now finished under caution, leaving NXS teams thinking about a change in strategy heading to next week at another drafting track, Atlanta Motor Speedway.

In the NASCAR Cup Series, four of the last five Daytona 500s have officially ended by caution instead of the checkered. Leading on the last lap used to mean the car in front would be a sitting duck, waiting for an impossible run to come flying by in both lanes.

On Thursday, Mike Joyof FOX Sports posed the question about leading at the white, and both Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick emphatically answered they would rather be in front because races seem more likely than ever to end with a yellow.

The final laps are always a waiting game because drivers don’t want to make a move too early and lose their chance at a win. But drivers – both Sunday evening and at Atlanta next week – should consider going earlier and planning on a caution late.

4. Can veterans in the Truck Series provide some experience and stability?

In recent years, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series has tended to turn into a bit of a Demolition Derby. Younger, impatient drivers with little experience and quick tempers apparently enjoy driving more laps under caution than they do at speed, and the races have been hard to watch at times.

While the younger guys push each other around each week, it’s been Corey Heim and Christian Eckes snatching up most of the wins in the past two seasons. 

2025 has the potential to provide more stability and better displays of racing instead of wrecking with the return of a few veterans and experienced drivers.

Heim will be the one to beat again, especially after winning the season opener due to Parker Kligerman’s disqualification. Drivers like Ty Majeski, Grant Enfinger and Ben Rhodes have been around for a bit now. Meanwhile, Layne Riggs, Tanner Gray and Jake Garcia have shown consistent improvement and slight maturity over the past few seasons.

The Truck Series has a few new faces who have lots of experience in all three of NASCAR’s top divisions with Chandler Smith and Daniel Hemric competing full time in 2025. Add Justin Haley and Michael McDowell to a few extra races, and there are some seriously stacked fields, both this past weekend and throughout the year.

The Xfinity Series has really had some bright spots in recent years with regular, young talent showing their skills and stealing the spotlight without any Cup guys consistently stealing wins. The Truck Series has been the opposite, really taking some steps back and turning into a crapshoot at times. 

Friday’s Valentine’s Day race had fewer cautions than the 2024 season opener, and a number of those crashes involved just a few drivers spinning on their own, more or less.

Reintroducing some veteran drivers with serious experience has the potential to clean up the Truck races this season while elevating the level of competition.

Caleb Barnes

Caleb began sports writing in 2023 with The Liberty Champion, where he officially covered his first NASCAR race at Richmond in the spring. While there, Caleb met some of the guys from Frontstretch, and he joined the video editing team after graduating from Liberty University with degrees in Strategic Communications and Sports Journalism. Caleb currently work full-time as a Multi-Media Journalist with LEX 18 News in Lexington, Kentucky and contributes to Frontstretch with writing and video editing. He's also behind-the-scenes or on camera for the Happy Hour Podcast, live every Tuesday night at 7:30!