With the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray rescheduled to Monday, February 2, due to adverse weather conditions that battered the track, NASCAR officials made the decision in the interest of safety. As a result, drivers have already begun shifting their focus to the next race on the calendar: the Daytona 500 on February 15. But not everyone will be too excited about it.
Advertisement
Veteran Tony Stewart, in a podcast last year, admitted to not considering the Daytona 500 as prestigious as it was 15-20 years ago anymore. He feels winning the Great American Race has lost some of its luster, believing some drivers have won the Daytona 500, even though they weren’t the most deserving.
Kyle Larson, like the rest of the NASCAR community, respects Stewart tremendously. But he vehemently disagrees with Stewart’s claim that the Daytona isn’t esteemed enough.
Larson, speaking to the media earlier this week, remarked, “I mean, it’s always going to be prestigious and feel prestigious. I’ve never won the race. I’ve never even finished top-five, so I don’t know what the feeling is like. I would imagine the feeling of winning is still going to be extremely massive, if it ever happens.”
“But in a way, not that I fully agree with those comments, and I don’t know if that’s exactly how they’re meant to be anyways, but it is difficult to get really excited about the winner or who’s won when usually there’s a 20-car pile-up and the guy running towards the back squeaks through, and then misses another wreck later and wins,” the 2025 Cup Champion continued.
Larson understands that this is racing and that it is simply how things go in the Next Gen era. At Daytona and Talladega, almost anyone can prevail because of pileups and late-race wrecks, but teams that consistently put themselves in the right position and drivers who make the smartest decisions still find ways to win.
William Byron’s back-to-back victories are a perfect example. They are not a fluke. The cream still rises to the top, and Byron has won at Daytona in both the old-style car and the current Next Gen machine.
Like the current No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports driver, Stewart never won a Harley J. Earl Trophy despite a Hall of Fame résumé. Between 1999 and 2016, he amassed 49 Cup Series wins and three championships, yet the Daytona 500 eluded him. His best finish in the Great American Race was a runner-up result in 2004. Stewart did, however, win the summer race at Daytona International Speedway four times.
As things stand, the Clash has been rescheduled for Monday, but continued extreme weather could force NASCAR to move the race to next weekend or potentially relocate it to its former home at Daytona International Speedway. If that happens, drivers would benefit from additional track time, effectively using the Clash as a warm-up ahead of the Daytona 500.
