Full highlights and race results from the 2023 Daytona 500
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Over a morning cup of coffee with his wife on Sunday, Tad Geschickter shared something. The co-owner of JTG Daugherty Racing sensed that his driver, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., was going to win the Daytona 500 later that day. It was the same thought he had prior to the August 2014 race at Watkins Glen when JTG won its lone NASCAR Cup Series race with then-driver AJ Allmendinger.
Normally, the feeling Geschickter was experiencing Sunday morning would call for an immediate trip to a nearby medical facility. The harsh truth is that most weeks, JTG, co-owned by the Geschickters and retired NBA player Brad Daugherty, is simply not a team whose owner can confidently state that his team can win.
“I was up at 3:30 tossing around just thinking through the day, and when Tad woke up, I’m making coffee, and he said, ‘We’re going to win today,’” Jodi Geschickter said. “I said, ‘Do you really think so?’ He said, ‘I do. I feel it. I feel like we’re going to win today.’ We prepare every week, and sometimes you know when you’ve got a better shot than others, but Tad really felt it.
But here at Daytona International Speedway, Tad Geschickter’s feeling couldn’t be chalked up to foolish optimism. Daytona represents a style of racing where Stenhouse is at his best. He is one of NASCAR’s elite talents on drafting tracks, where his ability to understand the nuances of running in a large pack with horsepower-restricted engines makes him a perennial contender. Both his career victories occurred on such ovals, winning the 2017 spring race at Talladega Superspeedway and then, a few months later, the summer race at Daytona. And there have been other near wins since, including last year’s Daytona 500.
“Ricky has a mindset of knowing when to press, when to attack,” said Jim Campbell, U.S. vice president of performance and motorsports for Chevrolet. “He just has a sense of knowing how to get to the front in these races.”
(Photo: Getty Images)
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