NASCAR: Notable omission from Daytona entry list

One driver who was slated to compete in Saturday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway will not have the chance to do so.

The entry list for the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series regular season finale at Daytona International Speedway, Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 (7:00 p.m. ET, NBC), was revealed earlier this week.

Set to compete in this 160-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilomete) high-banked Daytona Beach, Florida oval are 37 drivers, including 36 in full-time chartered entries and one in a part-time open entry.

The one driver set to drive a non-chartered car in this race is Noah Gragson, who is set for his third start behind the wheel of the #62 Chevrolet for Beard Motorsports this year.

Gragson has made eight starts this season behind the wheel of the #16 Chevrolet for Kaulig Racing, but Daniel Hemric is set to drive that car on Saturday night for his sixth start of the year.

One non-chartered car left off the entry list was Team Stange Racing’s #79 Chevrolet.

Earlier this season, Team Stange Racing announced an eight-race schedule for Tarso Marques, and that included the Coke Zero Sugar 400. However, Marques and the team will not be competing in this race.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anybody who has been following this team’s situation over the last few months, however.

The team were initially scheduled to have made their Cup Series debut at Road America back in early July, but that didn’t pan out.

They then planned to field an Xfinity Series entry at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in order for the 46-year-old Brazilian to be granted approval by NASCAR to compete in the Cup Series, but that also didn’t pan out. Unsurprisingly, they did not field the #79 Chevrolet for him in the Cup Series race at the track either.

Then at Watkins Glen International, their third planned race of the season, they also did not compete. Interestingly, this race set a Cup Series record with drivers from seven different countries on the grid. Had Marques competed, Brazil would have been the eighth.

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out moving forward, especially since Marques did recently say that he would still like to compete in a race or two at some point later this season.

Beyond this weekend, there are just 10 races remaining on the schedule, and all are playoff races. The team’s initial schedule included the four playoff races at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval (Sunday, October 9), Las Vegas Motor Speedway (Sunday, October 16), Homestead-Miami Speedway (Sunday, October 23), and Phoenix Raceway (Sunday, November 6).

Will approval be granted for Marques to compete in any of those events?

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