Live updates: What’s happening today in NASCAR? Busch Clash; Ross Chastain not ROY eligible

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Live updates: What’s happening today in NASCAR? Busch Clash; Ross Chastain not ROY eligible

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Alex Andrejev
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NASCAR’s 2021 year is being teased by Fox as (maybe) the “Best Season Ever.” The storylines, which include new teams, new tracks and celebrity investors, are seemingly endless. Tonight, the 2021 season starts.

Unofficially. The non-points exhibition race, the Busch Clash, will put drivers on the Daytona road course for the first NASCAR Cup competition since last season’s finale at Phoenix.

Ryan Blaney is starting on the pole with Alex Bowman in the front row, via a random draw. The full lineup for the race is below. This is the first time the Clash is being run on the Daytona road course instead of the tri-oval, and should give the 21 teams entered a chance to gather data ahead of the points race at the Daytona road course on Feb. 21.

“When you go down (to Daytona) and lose one (car) in the Clash and one in the 500, or two or three in the 500 — I’ve lost four there before — and it’s costly,” Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick said, highlighting a benefit to teams running the Clash on the road course.

“You put so much work into those cars to make them as aerodynamic as they can be. They’re like a fine watch,” Hendrick said. “And when the race is over, they look like they raced Martinsville ... I’m really glad we’re running the road course at the Clash though. I don’t think we’ll have near the opportunity for wrecks as we would on the oval.”

Before the Clash, team haulers will arrive to the garage in the morning, and two drivers in tonight’s race, Joey Logano (morning) and Ty Dillon (afternoon) are scheduled to speak with the media. We’ll have highlights from those sessions posted here later.

Check back for Speedweeks updates throughout the day and follow the Observer’s NASCAR reporter Alex Andrejev on Twitter at @AndrejevAlex. Got story ideas for tips or the 2021 season? Send them to aandrejev@charlotteobserver.com.

NASCAR drivers we’re talking to today

We’ll let you know what they say.

  • Joey Logano. 10–10:30 a.m.

  • Ross Chastain. 10:50-11 a.m.

  • Ty Dillon. 1:30-2 p.m.

Live updates from around NASCAR ...

Ross Chastain not in Rookie of the Year battle, but feels like a Cup rookie

Chip Ganassi Racing driver Ross Chastain won’t be eligible for this year’s Rookie of the Year competition in the Cup Series.

“Isn’t that crazy?” Chastain told The Observer. Chastain said he had stopped in Orlando to do some media calls this morning while driving to Daytona Beach from his family’s watermelon farm in Fort Myers, Fla.

“I’ve never collected a single point in the Cup Series and I’ve never run all the races,” Chastain said.

NASCAR’s Rookie of the Year eligibility maintains that a driver must not have run more than seven races and declared to compete for driver points in that series. Chastain has started in 79 Cup events since 2017, but he’s never run the full 36-race schedule nor declared for driver points in Cup. He said he wanted to run for Rookie of the Year honors this year.

“I wanted to go fight Anthony (Alfredo) and Chase (Briscoe) and have that fun battle,” Chastain. “But I wouldn’t trade my experience for it and I understand that 70-something races is pretty valuable.”

Chastain said he “feels” like a rookie because of the step up in equipment this year with CGR and the fact that he’s slated to run a full season. He completed three Cup races last season for Roush Fenway Racing, substituting for Ryan Newman in the No. 6 Ford while Newman recovered from his Daytona 500 accident, and ran five races for Spire Motorsports.

“Yeah, I’ve been there,” Chastain, 28, said. “But it’s been an average of 32nd place and so that’s a different level than where we’re shooting for with this 42 car.”

In essence, Chastain recently realized he won’t have an official Cup rookie season. He said his team loaded the car into the hauler without any rookie stripes.

How Joey Logano sees dirt trial and Busch Clash on road course

10:40 a.m. Logano entered a dirt race at Volusia Speedway Park, a half-mile dirt oval in Florida, over the weekend and posted an impressive third-place finish in his modified feature. It was his first time at DIRTcar Nationals in a UMP Modified. Logano said his entry was intended to help prepare him for the NASCAR Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway on dirt this year, but he noted that it’s a “very different type of racing.”

“There’s no mirrors in that thing! And I’m a mirror driving guy,” Logano said of his modified car. “When you took that thing away from me, I didn’t know what to do.”

Logano is also entered in tonight’s Clash. He said that just because the race is on the road course, he doesn’t expect less hard racing.

“It’s an all-star race,” Logano said. “There’s nothing to lose. Everyone’s going to be racing aggressively.”

No surprise, Logano said he’ll be racing aggressively, too. Defending Daytona 500 winner, Denny Hamlin, chimed in on social media with his thoughts about tonight’s race running on the road course. Hamlin doesn’t appear to be a fan.

“Some ideas are meant to stay ideas,” he wrote.

How to watch NASCAR Busch Clash

  • Race: Busch Clash at Daytona

  • Distance: 126.35 miles, 35 laps on the 3.61-mile road course

  • Where: Daytona road course

  • When: 7 p.m. EST

  • TV: FS1 (coverage starts at 6 p.m.)

  • Streaming:

  • Radio: MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

  • 2020 winner: Erik Jones

Busch Clash starting order



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