RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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NASCAR drivers could go into crazy specifics.
Track temperature, tire grip, cabin comfort.
All of those aspects differ between day and night races and have an effect on the action.
But for Noah Gragson , the hardest part of pounding the pavement after dark is a lot easier for regular folk to understand.
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“It’s really nice at night when you’re racing. It looks awesome,” Gragson told the News-Journal. “But you’re just kind of waiting all day and not really doing a ton. I feel like that’s the biggest struggle of a night race for me.”
Yes, like you, professional racecar drivers deal with boredom and get tired of waiting. They're creatures of habit.
The Cup Series will break out of its routine again this week with the Coke Zero Sugar 400 . The green flag is set to drop a few minutes after 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Daytona International Speedway .
It marks just the seventh event of Cup Series’ 26-race regular season to have a scheduled start time after 4 p.m. Most weeks, drivers fire up their engines around 3 p.m.
Our town’s signature showdown, the Daytona 500, is always an afternoon affair — as long as the weather cooperates.
“It’s all around just such a fun weekend to go back to Daytona during the summertime and race under the lights,” Gragson said. “We don’t really get to do that a ton for the Daytona 500. So it’s definitely an exciting weekend overall.”
He prefers the evening outings. They just throw off his pattern a tad before he climbs into the No. 4 Ford of Front Row Motorsports.
“I’ll try and sleep in,” the 28-year-old said. “Usually, if I’m waking up at 6 every day, I’m sleeping in until 8 (before night races).
“But at the same time, our schedules vary so much that you kind of just go with the flow of things. Sometimes, you’ll have some early mornings. Sometimes, you’ll have some late nights. You just have to kind of adapt on the fly.”
Once his race-day schedule does begin, it looks normal.
“I’m lucky there’s a lot of different opportunities to go to the racetrack, go to the fan zone, so the day does get kickstarted a little bit later than usual, but we stay pretty busy the second half of the day and on into the nighttime,” he said. “Day races are fun. It’s usually pretty hot and slick, but night races look cool under the lights in my opinion.”
Gragson sits 31st in the standings, so he won’t factor into this season’s Chase, the revamped playoff format. Still, he notes there are plenty of intriguing storylines surrounding the Coke Zero Sugar 400.
The postseason seeding will be settled at Daytona.
And as the regular-season finale, it’s a milepost event.
“It’s kind of that last hurrah for a lot of people that are going out to the racetrack and want to go out, barbecue, camp, maybe have a couple beers, have a party,” Gragson said. “It’s that last hurrah before summer ends and kids get back into school and whatnot.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Noah Gragson reveals toughest part of NASCAR night races at Daytona
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