logo
How NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger sees Daytona's Coke Zero Sugar 400 with playoffs looming

How NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger sees Daytona's Coke Zero Sugar 400 with playoffs looming

Yahoo13 hours ago
DAYTONA BEACH — You couldn't tell if AJ Allmendinger was being serious or not.
While taking groups of media members and raffle winners around the Daytona International Speedway tri-oval before a fundraiser on July 23, the NASCAR Cup Series driver hopped out of the Chevrolet Blazer pace car after each ride, greeted the next bunch and quipped as they climbed in with him.
'I'm wearing that front left tire out! That's OK. I think it's got two more laps in it.'
'Man, we're heating those brakes up! We should be all right.'
The tires looked normal, even after a few rounds at 130 miles per hour. But the brake smell lingered on pit road.
Later, Allmendinger broke out more (likely) sarcasm. He said his visit to Daytona a month before the Coke Zero Sugar 400 offered him an advantage.
'You know, just practicing running the top,' Allmendinger said, holding back a smile. 'It's slick out there. The old Chevy Blazer, I might try to take the shock package off that thing because that was really smooth. Might take that over to my crew chief, Trent Owens, and see what we can learn from that.'
If there is an advantage to the few extra practice laps, Allmendinger will take it.
Daytona's August race returns to the final week of the regular season this year. Last summer, due to a two-week Olympic break, it filled the second-to-last slot on the calendar.
Translation: The Coke Zero Sugar 400 is back to being the final chance for drivers to claim one of the 16 playoff spots. Some will leave Daytona Beach happy. Many won't.
'It's going to be some action,' said Allmendinger, who is in the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet full-time this year. 'This being the cutoff race, we're all-take now. It's not give-and-take. It's going to be all-take from everybody. It'll be a fun event.'
Following the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Sunday, there have been 13 winners, locking each of them into the postseason with four races to go.
Two of those four will occur at ovals (Iowa and Richmond). The others will take place at larger wild cards (road course Watkins Glen and superspeedway Daytona).
Allmendinger sits 124 points below the cutline, four spots removed from the playoffs. As a road-course specialist, he views Watkins Glen as his best chance to score a postseason-clinching victory.
But if it doesn't happen there, well, enter Daytona and all the chaos that comes with it. The Coke Zero Sugar 400 is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 23.
'Of course, the goal is to make the playoffs,' Allmendinger said, 'but we've just got to keep getting better. We've had some really good runs. We've had some speed, I would say. At more than three quarters of the races, we've been pretty quick. We've just had some bad luck, and there are a lot of teams that can say that.'But just trying to keep getting better. If that gets us into the playoffs, great. If not, you finish the year strong and keep trying to build where our organization is at on the Cup side of it.'
No joking there.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: How NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger sees Daytona race before playoffs
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Game #128: Athletics at Twins Game Thread
Game #128: Athletics at Twins Game Thread

Yahoo

time25 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Game #128: Athletics at Twins Game Thread

After taking the series opener in Minnesota last night the A's will try to make it two in a row over the Twins, looking to both inch closer to 60 wins while burying the Twins' dwindling playoff chances. Rookie JT Ginn will get the ball to start tonight's contest. His last few times on the mound have not been smooth; he's allowed 12 runs over his past three starts spanning just 11 2/3 frames. The 26-year-old doesn't seem like he's in any immediate danger of losing his spot in the starting rotation with no other obvious options to step into his spot. With the club out of contention and an eye already on the future they can afford to let Ginn work through his struggles in the big leagues but ideally he'd start turning things around against a team that is in free fall. Overall on the year he's posted a 5.04 ERA across 16 appearances (nine starts). Here's how Mark Kotsay ordered tonight's lineup for the middle contest of the series: Then A's will be going with the exact same lineup tonight, and after things worked out well why mess with things, right? That starting nine's opponent tonight? Twins right-hander Bailey Ober. It's been a tough season all around in Minnesota but especially so for the 30-year-old Ober. Over the past three seasons Ober had been a stable arm in the middle of the Twins' rotation with a 3.66 ERA while averaging 22 starts a year. This year he's already made 20 starts but has struggled to a bloated 5.15 ERA that contributed to the team's disappointing season. He's yet to face the A's this year but he shut down the offense a pair of times last season. Minny's lineup for the second game of the series breaks down like this: Two wins in a row? Fingers crossed! Let's go A's!

The future of golf isn't just players; creators (and their cameras) are here too
The future of golf isn't just players; creators (and their cameras) are here too

Yahoo

time25 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

The future of golf isn't just players; creators (and their cameras) are here too

ATLANTA — I saw the future of golf Wednesday afternoon on the East Lake Golf Club putting green. There, 2019 Open champion Shane Lowry and Ryder Cup hero Tommy Fleetwood lined up their last putts before the Tour Championship begins on Thursday. Just a few feet away from them, a handful of YouTube creators, podcasters and influencers — each with their own camera crew — milled about, reading putts and pacing before their own tee times. Wednesday marked the fourth installment of the Creator Classic, a PGA Tour-developed, YouTube-sponsored event pitting 12 of the best-known golf creators against one another in a nine-hole made-for-YouTube event, on the exact same course the pros will play in their season-ending tournament this week. A few steps away from the putting green, three of the stars of the 'Good Good Golf' YouTube channel (1.93 million subscribers) walked toward the first tee for their 3:54 p.m. tee time. On the nearby 18th, another professional golfer measured out his last putts of the day. A group of kids standing along a fenceline couldn't quite figure out whom to watch — the Good Good guys or the pro … a guy by the name of Scottie Scheffler. If that sounds weird or strange or flat-out wrong to you, well … you're not the target demographic for this particular brand of golf. But a whole lot of people are, and the PGA Tour is trying its best to reach them. 'These creators all kind of speak to their own audiences with their own production crews and their own voices,' Chris Wandell, the PGA Tour's Senior Vice President for Media, told Yahoo Sports. 'The amount of content that has resulted from this, and each one of these, has been mind-blowing … content that we could never have scripted just organically happens.' For as long as there's been golf, the relationship between player and fan has been clear: the player plays in front of the fans, the fan watches the pros. But the rise of cheap video capabilities and easy distribution created a third class: fans who play for other fans. Golf 'influencers' and 'content creators' — purists may cringe at the terms, but they're the ones that fit — play some variant of the game in front of literal millions of fans, demythologizing and democratizing a game that's been defined by its gatekeeping rather than its inclusivity. Wednesday's Creator Classic is the fourth installment of the series that began last year at East Lake, a creation born after the Tour recognized just how much Tour-adjacent work that creators were already doing — player interviews, analysis, even tournaments of their own. East Lake makes for a perfect The Tour Championship provided an unconventional, but ideal opportunity — with only 30 players in the field, the course was largely clear by Wednesday afternoon. (Scheffler, Lowry and Fleetwood notwithstanding.) Fans were already on the course and ready to watch more golf … why not give them something a bit outside the norm? 'It was kind of a test — would the idea resonate with fans? Would it resonate with sponsors? Would it bring new people to a tournament that might not otherwise come on a Wednesday at 4:00?' Wandell said. 'We ran it as a test with no solid plans to do it again, and the creators had a great time. Sponsors said, How do I get involved with that? A lot of tournaments called us and said, Can we do this at our tournament?' And so, here we are. Draw a Venn diagram of golf creators, and all you'd have in the center is the word 'golf.' Creators run the gamut from analysts to comedians, precise shotmakers to pranksters. Each style draws in a different subset of fans — fans who might not otherwise get anywhere near a PGA Tour event. 'My fans like to see my friends and I just bantering, talking nonsense,' said Luke Kwon (379,000 subscribers), winner of the 2024 East Lake Creators Classic. 'I think we tend to act like how they act. There's so much comedy that golf sometimes gets pushed to the side.' Others seek to set an example and open doors for people traditionally excluded from the golf world. 'You don't have to be from the best area, the best circumstances to find a place in this game,' Roger Steele (232,000 Instagram followers) said. 'I think that there's opportunities for everybody. You meet good people, and good people will do good things for you.' The twelve creators invited to play on Thursday represent a diverse group of interests and demographics. (Well, not age-wise. Most appeared to fit comfortably in the millennial/elder-Gen Z demo. There were no 65-year-old Boomers or precocious Gen Alphas in the mix. Maybe next year.) Some were here for the competition, some for the fashion, some for the laughs. But all brought massive audiences to the table. The live stream on YouTube easily topped 20,000 viewers — perhaps not massive numbers when compared to a seven-figure PGA Tour broadcast, but better than other golf YouTube streams we could name. 'We've tried our best to balance size of audience, diversity of audience and golf skill,' Wandell says. 'We would love to host 25 handicaps, but this golf course is so hard. Most of these guys are scratch, and even putting them on a course like this, they're going to have trouble breaking par.' The Creator Classic is the live embodiment of an internet truism: where vast viewership numbers gather, money and brands follow. Virtually all of the players in Wednesday's event have their own sponsorship deals, and many have their own merch lines. Akshay Bhatia, who would tee off in the Tour Championship Thursday, mingled with several creators around the putting green. No Laying Up's Soly even managed to wrangle Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan as a caddie. Oh, and there was $100,000 on the line for the winner. Not a bad paycheck for nine holes' work. It's always strange to see social media influencers in the wild. They locate, and mug for, the camera after virtually every significant moment. Their voices, their movements, their entire demeanor are exaggerated when the camera's on them, which works on a phone screen but is juuuuust a bit too much for real life. And oh, the cameras are everywhere. They're the reason these 12 are here, after all. Every moment — every drive, every putt, every chip, every expression — is potential fodder for content, so those cameras have to be rolling. Producers will be hard at work starting Wednesday evening, chopping and carving hours of footage into easily digestible social media content. 'We're trying to build all types of fans, and we want to create products and data and content for fans, no matter how much they want to consume,' Wandell says. 'A lot of the new fans may not have cable, or don't have ESPN Plus. So let's give them some snackable video content, develop the love of golf.' As for the golf itself … well, let's just say the spotters and fore-right paddle holders got more of a workout Wednesday than they're likely to get the rest of the week. Several players dunked their tee shots on the wicked 15th, and most got a chance to visit East Lake's lush rough. Most finished their eight holes over par — in some cases, well over par. But we have all weekend to watch exceptional players at East Lake; this was about watching men and women not all that different from us — better golf games, sure, but otherwise relatable — handling a challenge that most only get to watch on TV. 'My main goal?' said Peter Finch (753,000 subscribers) shortly before teeing off. 'To not be crap.' Haven't we all felt that way, every single round? (For the record, Finch would go on to finish at +6, two strokes out of last place.) In a very real way, the creators are the viewer's avatar, and that's what makes them compelling viewing — it's not hard to imagine ourselves in that spot, and not hard to wonder how we'd do trying to clear the waters of East Lake. (Answer: probably not well.) 'They're getting to play the course inside the ropes, and the full broadcast and all the production, but they're just as excited to see these guys play the course [Thursday] and all through the weekend,' said Chad Mumm, one of the creators of Netflix's 'Full Swing' and president of Pro Shop, a studio that develops original content like the Creator Classic. 'It's just so important for cultivating a healthy future for the fan base of the tour … The internet seems to be in love with what we're doing, and the engagement's been really good.' The Creator Classic ended up being one of the most dramatic finishes of the year on Tour, with four players competing on a single sudden-death playoff hole, in an absolute frog-strangler of a downpour, for $100,000. In the end, Good Good's Brad Dalke took home the title, soaked to the bone as he bro-hugged his way off the course. Golf is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the creator economy; no other sport combines the diversity of locales with the relatively low cost of entry. One tennis court looks pretty much like another, and racing is far too expensive for a casual creator, to cite two other individual-friendly sports. Baseball, basketball, football — none of those lend themselves to the combination of banter, skill and camera-friendly settings that golf does. This isn't the golf of Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, true … but each one of those legends advanced the game far beyond where they found it, too. There's room for both creators and players in the game of golf, both metaphorically and literally. As several of the creators left the driving range, working their way through both a thicket of cameras and pros like Justin Thomas, one security guard nudged another and pointed at one of the creators, crowing loudly, 'He's internet famous!' A few years ago, that would have been a dismissive insult. Now, though, it sounds a whole lot like admiration.

Tesla (TSLA) Stock: Barclays Reiterates Equal Weight, Cites Robotaxi Permit Delays
Tesla (TSLA) Stock: Barclays Reiterates Equal Weight, Cites Robotaxi Permit Delays

Yahoo

time25 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Tesla (TSLA) Stock: Barclays Reiterates Equal Weight, Cites Robotaxi Permit Delays

Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is one the . On August 18, Barclays reiterated the stock as 'Equal Weight' stating that it sees a 'lengthy' permitting process for Tesla's robotaxi. 'The process for 'real' autonomous Robotaxi in CA will likely be lengthy, as Tesla must apply for and receive a number of permits prior to offering paid, driverless services; moreover, media reports indicate that Tesla's engagement with California regulators has been more limited than people realize, with Tesla Robotaxi pitched for now in a more limited way than people understand.' Pixabay/Public Domain Analysts on Wall Street currently have a consensus 'Buy' rating on the stock. The average price target of $329 implies a 1.8% upside; however, the Street-high target of $500 implies an upside of 49.2%. Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is an automotive and clean energy company that leverages advanced artificial intelligence in its autonomous driving technology and robotics initiatives. While we acknowledge the potential of TSLA as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and Disclosure: None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store