NASCAR: Are We Tempting Fate With Trucks At Daytona?

The first trip the then Craftsman Truck Series took to Daytona in 2000 left us breathless as we hoped Geoffrey Bodine was alive. Since then they have provided spectacular wrecks year after year. With so many inexperienced drivers it raises the question, is this the best place for the Camping World Truck season to start?

Daytona International Speedway is the home of NASCAR’s opening weekend, the Super Bowl of Motorsports, the Daytona 500. It is a spectacular showcase of the sports best talent in engineering marvels traveling at close to 200 miles per hour. With the great speeds and drafting there has been some of NASCAR’s most spectacular crashes. Unfortunately it is also a place where tragedy has struck drivers 22 different times including NASCAR legend Niel Bonnett and most infamously the great Dale Earnhardt in 2001.

Christopher Bell’s last lap accident in the NextEra Energy Resources 250 is another reminder of the dangers of racing at the world center of speed. While all the drivers in the 2016 running of the Daytona 500 have speedway racing experience, the same cannot be said for Camping World Truck series. It is a series of truck veterans and newcomers to NASCAR’s highest ranks. Before Daytona, Bell had run just seven Camping World truck series events. Another driver in the race, highly touted Rico Abreu, was in his third truck series even. Both Bell and Abreu are sprint car veterans with very little full bodied stock car experience. As you glance down the entry list you see the same story repeated over and over again, a mix of divers with huge differences in the level of experience.

NASCAR first ran the trucks at Daytona in 2000, a spectacular race that nearly ended in tragedy for Geoffrey Bodine. Since then they have opened their season at arguably the series most demanding track. The mix of drivers with and without experience has resulted in several of the most incredible incidents in Daytona history. With a third of the field with no drafting experience in competition the results have been a nightmare for truck owners in the series. It raises the question if this is the best track for then newest truck series drivers to cut their teeth on.

Before you can race on restrictor plate tracks in the Sprint Cup Series you have to show that you can race safely on a large track. That entails a NASCAR race on a mile and a half track or ARCA series race at Daytona. They have a system set up to protect the others on the track and the fans in the stands. With the trucks running at speeds within 10 MPH of the cup cars, why does NASCAR not require the same of the less experienced drivers? Is a track like Daytona the right place for drivers to be making their first green flag pit stops in their careers? Getting to pit road was the cause of one of the bigger accidents in the NextEra Energy Resources 250.

The truck series provides great entertainment year after year, and NASCAR makes sure the trucks and tracks are as safe as possible. The problem is that just about every year there comes a time we find that the sport is not as safe as we think, just ask Kyle Busch. With the extreme incidents that racing at Daytona creates is this really the race that we should be starting the season with? Are we just setting ourselves up for another tragedy that could be avoided if we waited until later in the season when these drivers are more experienced in these heavy trucks and have some experience driving in packs at smaller tracks.

I don’t know the answer, but I do know as a fan I hate holding my breath after accidents like Christopher Bell’s. With incidents like his, maybe its time to reevaluate Daytona being the first race of the Camping World Trucks season.

Home/Camping World Truck Series