SEATTLE - The Daytona 500 race will be run on a Monday for the third time in history. This time it's due to bad weather around the Daytona Beach area. Since the first race in 1959, only four other times did the iconic race suffer a change in its 200-lap tradition, all of them shortened due to bad weather (1965, 1966, 2003, 2009).
When the race gets underway on Monday, two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano will lead the race after winning the pole position in the qualifying rounds. Twelve places behind him will be Mexican pilot Daniel Suárez, who will compete in his 7th Daytona 500 race and try to improve on his 7th place achieved last year, his best finish at the famous circuit so far.
The Daytona 500 mark the beginning of the NASCAR Cup Series season. Entering his 8th season at the highest level in this racing world, Suárez will look for the second win of his career. Suárez won his first and only race so far in NASCAR in 2022, finishing ahead of everyone at the Sonoma Raceway.
Besides his NASCAR win, Suárez already knows what it feels like to win a championship. In 2016, he won the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Joe Gibbs Racing, becoming the first Mexican to win a major NASCAR National Series championship.
The Monterrey native has more than 250 races in NASCAR since his first season in 2017. As well as his win, he has 59 top ten finishes to go along with 3 poles. His best finish in a NASCAR Cup Series was a 10th place accomplished in 2022, the same season he won his one and only NASCAR event.
Before reaching the top division in NASCAR racing, Suárez also competed in the Xfinity Series where he made his debut in 2014. Since then, Suárez took part in 84 races in the series, winning three of those (all in 2016) leading him to the Xfinity Series crown that season with 4,040 points accrued.
According to DraftKings, Daniel Suárez enters the "Great American Race" with +6500 odds to win the event, compared to just +4000 when the bets opened. Although he is not favored to win the race, he has a realistic chance of making the top 5. The odds for him to finish the Daytona 500 among the top 5 drivers is just +800.
Three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin is the favorite among sportsbooks to take the Great American Race. Hamlin enters the race with +750 odds to win the event for a fourth time in his career, which would tie him with Cale Yarborough in second place for most wins in the Daytona speedway.
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