Six teams entered the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season-opening Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway fielding only a single non-chartered (open) entry, meaning they risked missing the "Great American Race" entirely.
Two of those six teams qualified, while the other four were sent home.
NY Racing and Live Fast Motorsports were both sent home after J.J. Yeley failed to qualify the No. 44 Chevrolet and B.J. McLeod failed to qualify the No. 78 Chevrolet, respectively. But both are on the entry list for this Sunday afternoon's Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and with only 39 cars on that list, they are locked into the race.
But the other two teams that failed to qualify at Daytona will not compete at Atlanta.
Beard Motorsports failed to make it into the race with Anthony Alfredo behind the wheel of the No. 62 Chevrolet. Alfredo successfully qualified for the event last year, but this year's DNQ means that the team still haven't gotten into the Daytona 500 in back-to-back years since 2019 and 2020.
Then there is Garage 66, the team formerly known as MBM Motorsports. They were forced to make a late driver change due to NASCAR's ruling that Mike Wallace was ineligible to compete, and it was Chandler Smith who ended up being behind the wheel of the No. 66 Ford.
Smith, whose first Daytona 500 with Kaulig Racing resulted in a DNQ back in 2023, unfortunately fell to 0-for-2. The Carl Long-owned team have now failed to qualify each of their five most recent Daytona 500 entries: two in 2021, two in 2022, and now another one in 2025. They most recently appeared in the race with Timmy Hill back in 2020.
Beard Motorsports are expected to return for the two races at Talladega Superspeedway as well as the summer race at Daytona, while Garage 66 have made clear that they want to compete in roughly 20 events on the 2025 calendar after returning to the Cup Series with 13 appearances last year.
Sunday afternoon's Ambetter Health 400 is set to be shown live on Fox from Atlanta Motor Speedway beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET. Begin a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action!