And now I’m officially back! Had a heck of a Super Bowl party here at the townhouse—who knew how popular cheesesteak egg rolls with barbecue sauce would be? But its time to move on from the Super Bowl to The Super Bowl of Auto Racing, the Daytona 500. Annnnnd some other races too.
I’m thinking we see a happy medium between last year’s mass of race winners and a small cadre of contenders—3 or 4 drivers win a majority of the races with another 5-7 winning a race a piece. I’m thinking we see Team Penske and Hendrick Motorsports dominate, with a small uptick in performance by Stewart-Haas and a slight downturn for Joe Gibbs Racing. And I’m thinking no matter what happens, bitter old race fans will find a way to complain.
With that out of the way, onto the picks!
Friday Night TRUCK SERIES NextEra Energy 250: Chase Elliott—Chase steps down to the Truck Series and gets a win. Heck of a way to spend your Friday night.
Saturday Evening XFINITY SERIES Beef 300: Sam Mayer—Number One finally breaks through. And boy do I miss those Beef Checkoff commercials from the 90s.
Sunday CUP SERIES Daytona 500: The Tarot Deck selects The Ten of Cups, 20th in points (from last year) Aric Almirola. FAVORITE: William Byron—an exciting race ends with a relatively dull winner. NEXT FAVORITE: Ross Chastain—and he won’t even need to run the wall this time (most likely). DARK HORSE: Ryan Preece—reminder that a “dark horse” is pretty much any driver not anticipated to win, typically someone who hasn’t won yet this year or last.
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