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Are Team Penske's Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski the early Daytona 500 favorites?
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida — Teams haven’t done anything other than qualifying runs with their Daytona 500 cars and yet it may be easy find a couple of favorites for Sunday’s race.
“I would definitely point towards to the Fords and Penske,” Kevin Harvick said.
Harvick is referring to teammates Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski. Logano won last week’s exhibition Clash race after Keselowski collided with leader Denny Hamlin on the final lap of the race. Keselowski — thanks to a push from Logano — went to pass Hamlin, who made a very late block and allowed Logano to fly past.
Keselowski and Logano have won four of the eight points-paying restrictor plate races since 2015. That past history, Jamie McMurray said, is what makes them a favorite before Thursday night’s Duel qualifying races.
“But, the two Penske cars were already there because they have run well for the last two years at every plate race,” McMurray said. “They’ve been fast. So, before we got here, we knew they were going to be fast.”
And while Logano and Keselowski have had great equipment in those races, of course, but they haven’t been up front by accident.
[Keselowski’s] probably the best right now,” Austin Dillon said. “There’s three guys right now that do a really good job of defending a lead and holding a lead. There’s Denny (Hamlin), Brad (Keselowski) and Joey (Logano). They’re very aggressive side-drafters.”
Logano won the 2015 Daytona 500 while Keselowski is searching for his first Daytona 500 win. He won the July race at Daytona in 2016 and has won both the spring and fall races at Talladega in his career. A win in the 500 will complete a restrictor plate grand slam for the 2012 Cup Series champion.
“The drivers’ tactics have changed dramatically since the first plate race that I drove in,” Keselowski said. “Now I look back at a plate race from the 90s and it reminds me when I was a kid playing sports and there were coaches on the side saying, ‘do this, do that,’ because they see all these opportunities to make a move, make a play. I go back and watch a race from the 90s and I say, ‘that move’s open, that move’s open, that one’s open, why didn’t he do that?’ And as you fast forward in time you see the drivers doing that. I’m almost embarrassed to watch a plate race that I’m in from five or six years ago, because all that I see is the moves that we open.”
… Certainly, the sport has changed and the drivers continue to get better. But the basics continue to be the same, you’ve always had to have good car to win this race. You’re going to have to have good car to win it this year, but you’re going to have to have those tactics right.”
If you’re looking to find the next-best favorites for the 500 at this point, you can look to Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing team. Hamlin won the 2016 Daytona 500 by inches over Martin Truex Jr. after JGR cars ran single-file in the top four positions as the laps wound down. If the battle for the win Sunday comes down to the Toyotas from Joe Gibbs Racing and the Fords from Team Penske, you heard it here first.
“Watching the last several plate races, I think the Gibbs guys have the market cornered on the favorite,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “The Penske guys are really strong. So I think it’s their race to lose.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
