The NASCAR Cup Series playoff field is set, and Ryan Blaney will be riding a wave of momentum into the postseason after winning the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night (Aug. 23). In a four-wide photo finish, Blaney denied several drivers behind him who needed a win to make the playoffs, allowing Alex Bowman to punch the 16th and final ticket to the Cup playoff grid.
Fuel mileage and tire wear both proved to be non-factors in the race’s outcome, but there were still a few notable pit road plotlines from the World Center of Racing.
The Winning Strategy
Despite starting from the pole, Blaney lost track position in the middle portion of the race, getting shuffled to the back of the draft. Blaney opted to bide his time during a largely clam stage two, conserving fuel and equipment for the home stretch.
“We just took what was given to us,” Blaney told NBC Sports post-race. “We had to take a lot of gas in stage two, and I wasn’t going to make up any ground, so I went into max fuel save mode so that maybe I could go a little bit earlier than other guys.”
With the win, Blaney now has five career wins on superspeedways out of his 15 total Cup wins, a credit to his talent on that type of racetrack as well as the cars No. 12 crew chief Jonathan Hassler prepares at the Team Penske race shop.
Penalty Proves Costly for Legacy Motor Club
There was a point early in the third stage when Legacy Motor Club had control of the race from the bottom lane of the draft, with John Hunter Nemechek leading in the No. 42 and Erik Jones pushing him in the No. 43.
However, poor execution on pit road unraveled LMC’s favorable position. On lap 111, Nemechek came down pit road for a splash and go to make it to the end on fuel, but Nemechek left before fuel man Rick Rozier Jr. could completely dislodge the fuel can.
As Nemechek drove away, Rozier fell across the front line of the No. 42 team’s pit stall, and he took the fuel can with him. As a result, NASCAR sent Nemechek to the tail of the field for the restart for removing equipment from the pit box.
While Jones contended up front for a while after that, he eventually got hung out of the draft and fell to the back before rebounding for a fifth-place finish. Nemechek didn’t have as fortunate of a rebound and was forced to settle for 17th.
If Nemechek had a clean final pit stop and avoided a penalty, would the results turned out differently for him, Jones and LMC?
Look Ahead to Next Week
The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs gets underway next Sunday, Aug. 31 with the Labor Day weekend tradition that is the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Race coverage begins at 6 p.m. ET on USA Network.
Drivers can go roughly 60 laps or so on a tank of fuel at Darlington, but you can probably go ahead and throw that out the window. With an older, abrasive surface that eats rubber for breakfast, lunch and dinner, drivers will go down pit road for four tires every chance they get.
Teams had 11 sets of Goodyears for the 400-mile race at Darlington in May, and that number figures to go up by three to four more sets for one of the crown jewels races on the NASCAR calendar.
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 as an iRacing contributor. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.