Noah Gragson made big splash in NASCAR Cup debut at Daytona 500. What can we expect Saturday night?
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A Cinderella story is shaping up at Daytona International Speedway.
Noah Gragson's magical chariot could be the No. 62 Beard Motorsports Chevrolet. The Las Vegas native will make his 11th career NASCAR Cup Series start in Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400, his second Cup Series start at Daytona and his third start with Beard Motorsports. Eight Cup starts have come in 2022 with Kaulig Racing and team owner Matt Kaulig.
Should Gragson win Saturday night’s race, which is certainly a possibility, it will be THE story of the 2022 Cup Series season.
He made his Cup Series debut with Beard Motorsports in the Daytona 500 in February. After starting 39th in the 40-car field, Gragson was running in the top 10 with just 10 laps remaining and was being mentioned as a possible top-five contender. Then came lap 191, when the amazing finish ended. A driver ahead of him lost control and sent the No. 62 Chevrolet hard into the wall, causing front-end damage and a 31st-place finish.
Gragson returned to Beard Motorsports in April at Talladega Superspeedway in April and finished 20th after getting off sequence during the final round of pit stops and losing the draft. It was a victory of sorts in the fact that he returned his blue and white Chevy to the garage in pristine condition without suffering any damage. After 188 laps of side-by-side racing at 190 miles per hour, that was a victory in itself.
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On Aug. 10, Gragson announced he will be joining Petty GMS as its full-time Cup Series driver in 2023. The fact that he helped to qualify and race a car that was an independent, non-chartered team with no guaranteed starting spot in the Daytona 500 that had to race its way into the 40-car field in one of two 150-mile qualifying races announced to the world the team was solid and so was their driver.
Their Chevrolet Camaro and ECR-built engine helped provide two top-10 finishes in 2020 with former driver Brendan Gaughan at the controls. A seventh-place finish in the Daytona 500 and eighth in the companion 400-mile event at the same track spoke volumes about the small, fledgling team. It is small but highly competitive against NASCAR’s top teams with high-caliber drivers.
Team owner Mark Beard Sr. died on Jan. 31, 2021, at 72. Beard was owner and team president for the No. 62 entry, which was used in part to market Beard Oil Distributing, a third-generation family business based in his hometown of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
Team matriarch Linda Beard, along with her children, carry on the passion of their husband and father, respectively, in racing and in business. Beard Sr. raced first as a NASCAR Xfinity Series driver-team owner in 1982. Today, Beard Motorsports competes in his honor. The race at Daytona marks the team’s 20th career NASCAR Cup Series start and its 10th at Daytona.
Gragson competes full-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for JR Motorsports and is an eight-time winner. In 2021, he won three races and advanced to the Championship 4 where he competed for the series title in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, finishing a career-high third in points.
The young rising star is looking forward to driving at Daytona come Saturday and is extremely honored to be wheeling the No. 62 Camaro for Beard Motorsports for another Cup Series start.
“The Beard Family gave me my first shot in Cup, Mr. and Mrs. Beard, Amie Beard and Mark Beard Jr.,” Gragson said in a team media release. “The whole family, you can’t say enough about them, they’ve really taken a chance on me. Darren Shaw (crew chief), really, they’ve got one employee over there, so it’s pretty special to be able to go there and be competitive.
Gragson knows things happen very fast at Daytona and Talladega, and focus is the name of the game. It’s vital for staying on the lead lap and in contention to win.
“You can’t get caught up in the wreck, but you’ve got to stay in the draft,” Gragson said. “And especially the green-flag pit stops, they’re an opportunity to mess up, but you have to have fast pit stops. The biggest struggle with superspeedway racing is just staying on the lead lap and making it to the end and having good pit strategies.”
One could say Gragson has three goals as he enters Saturday’s Cup Series race; gain experience during the 160-lap event, finish as high as possible and stay out of the way of those hoping for a spot in the final race before the Playoffs begin at Darlington Raceway on Sept. 4.
“I think you want to be considerate of those guys, but the most important thing for us is making it to the end of the race and then having a shot to win and really being smart,” Gragson said. “This year, trying to gain respect from the other competitors and not doing anything dumb – I think if we take that mindset, it doesn’t really change between playoff guys and non-playoff guys – it’s about getting that experience and getting that respect.”
NASCAR weekend TV schedule
At Daytona International Speedway
Friday
Xfinity qualifying, 3:05 p.m. (USA)
Cup qualifying, 5 p.m. (MRN)
Xfinity Wawa 250, 7:30 p.m. (USA)
Saturday
Cup Coke Zero Sugar 400, 7 p.m. (NBC)
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NASCAR Cup at Daytona: Can Noah Gragson make big splash again?
