Cody Ware's Daytona diary: Why not us at Coke Zero Sugar 400?
It's good to be back with the Daytona Beach News-Journal. This publication was kind enough to have me provide a daily diary during Daytona Speedweek and, six months later, I'm here to provide a look into how we get ready for the Coke Zero Sugar 400.
The summertime race at Daytona is a completely different animal from the Daytona 500. We qualify late in the day on Friday and then we race on Saturday night. Back in February, it was a full immersion with practice, time trials, qualifying races and more practice, all in the lead up to the Daytona 500. Here in August, it's a single lap of qualifying on Friday before 160 laps on Saturday night. The time at the track is much lower, but the stakes are still high.
It's 100 fewer miles than the Daytona 500, but the points pay the same. And just like a Daytona 500 win punches your ticket to the playoffs, a win in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 does the same thing. However, for those who haven't won yet this season and are outside of the top-16 cutoff to make the 10-race playoffs — which includes yours truly — it's the last chance to make NASCAR's version of the postseason. 'Win and you're in' is the mantra this weekend at Daytona.
With that comes a heighted level of aggression. There are guys who will take a lot more risk trying to win their way into the playoffs. Some guys might be less aggressive, some might be willing to take all the risk, either because it's their last chance to make the playoffs, or because they're already in and they feel like they're playing with house money, so they go hard for another win. Just having good awareness and navigating all that is important.
Last year at this race, I scored my best career NASCAR Cup Series result. I finished fourth, just a few clicks behind first-time winner Harrison Burton. It was kind of a chaotic race, but I guess typical for the summer race at Daytona. There were 40 lead changes and two massive, multicar accidents that collected nearly half the field.
It was a bit of survival and a bit of racing hard. It was really about the timing of when I made decisions. It wasn't about racing hard versus not racing hard. It was knowing when to race and when to ride, and that played a lot into our result.
Daytona is more of a mental game. It's like playing chess at 200 mph versus beating and banging.
I feel like I've honed my craft at the superspeedways and the results show. Now is the time to capitalize and put our No. 51 Arby's Ford Mustang Dark Horse in victory lane.
We always seem to do well at Daytona, and I think even more so in the summer, so why not us? I think we have just as good a shot as anybody to win on Saturday night.
Our preparation for Saturday began on Monday, at least from my perspective. The team juggles the race that's next up with the race that's next week and the week after that. I'm pretty focused on the race in front of me, and when it's over, I try to put it in the rearview mirror and focus on what's immediately ahead.
Last Saturday, we raced at Richmond. We got back home to Charlotte around 2 a.m. on Sunday, and I think I laid my head down a little bit before 3 a.m. So, Sunday was kind of a recovery day. My work for Daytona began Monday. I hit the gym and focused mostly on cardio. I wanted to get the heart pumping, get a good sweat and get sharpened up ahead of our team meeting.
Usually, our team meeting is on Tuesday afternoon, but we've got a Goodyear tire test this Tuesday, so we needed to move up our meeting so we could rehash everything from Richmond while it was still fresh in our minds, all while looking ahead to Daytona.
The work we do on weekends is there for everyone to see, but the work we do Monday through Thursday ahead of a race weekend is kind of under the radar. My goal this week with these diaries is to show you all that goes into what we hope is a very successful weekend at Daytona.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Cody Ware: Daytona summer race is different animal than Daytona 500
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