A few stories to keep an eye on for Sunday’s Daytona 500
Jeff Gordon will make his final run in the Great American Race Sunday. The future Hall of Fame driver will start from the pole. He hopes to win the race for the fourth time in his career. But he won’t likely feel much pressure to do so. He said earlier this preseason that he feels less stress entering the race than he has in the past. Socastee High School product Bailey Walker is a jack man for the No. 24 team. He says it’s motivating to know 2015 is Gordon’s final season, and that crew members hope to send him out on a good note.
Aric Almirola will start 33rd in Sunday’s Daytona 500 after sustaining damage to his No. 43 Ford during the Duels Thursday. It’s not what the team hoped for after posting the fastest time during group qualifying earlier this week. But crew chief Trent Owens, a Darlington native, is staying positive despite the setback.
“It doesn’t matter where you really start here at Daytona,” Owens said Friday. “Obviously you want to run in the top 10 all the time, but there’ll be plenty of strategies throughout the race where you’ll be in the front some of the race, you’ll have to go to the back at some point if you decide to take four tires, but the biggest thing is to try to be there at the end and try to position yourself somewhere in the top 10 in the end.”
Spartanburg-based race team HScott Motorsports enters its second season of Sprint Cup competition. Driver Justin Allgaier finished third in the Sprint Cup rookie standings during the team’s first season. The team added driver Michael Annett this year and hopes to continue building in 2015. Allgaier will start 18th Sunday. Annett will start 27th.
