Chase Elliott, known as NASCAR’s road racing king, will be starting first at the Daytona road course. Elliott, the defending Cup Series champion, will lead the field to green on Sunday in the first race of 2021 with a starting lineup set by NASCAR’s qualifying formula. Only eight of the 36 points races this season will have practice and qualifying, and those races will use a formula to determine each driver’s starting position.
The formula takes into account four factors: a driver’s finishing position from the previous race (25 percent), the car’s finishing position from the previous event (25 percent), where the team is in owner points (35 percent), and the driver’s fastest lap from the previous race (15 percent). The driver with the lowest combined number gets to start first.
Elliott finished second to Michael McDowell in the rain-delayed Daytona 500 and will have McDowell alongside him on the front row. Elliott has dominated road course races recently, winning the last four Cup Series points races on road courses dating back to the 2019 race at Watkins Glen.
The Daytona road course race was added to the schedule for the second consecutive season as a substitute race due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 2020 race was originally scheduled because NASCAR was unable to race at Watkins Glen. This year, the race at the Daytona road course replaced NASCAR’s annual trip to Auto Club Speedway in California.
Chase Elliott is going for his fifth-straight road course win. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Starting lineup
1. Chase Elliott
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2. Michael McDowell
3. Austin Dillon
4. Denny Hamlin
5. Kevin Harvick
6. Ryan Preece
7. Corey LaJoie
8. Kyle Larson
9. Ross Chastain
10. Bubba Wallace
11. Joey Logano
12. Christopher Bell
13. Cole Custer
14. Kyle Busch
15. Brad Keselowski
16. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
17. Kurt Busch
18. Chase Briscoe
19. Martin Truex Jr.
20. Justin Haley
21. Cody Ware
23. William Byron
23. Josh Bilicki
24. Tyler Reddick
25. Garrett Smithley
26. Aric Almirola
27. Ryan Blaney
28. Scott Heckert
29. Quin Houff
30. Chris Buescher
31. Anthony Alfredo
32. Matt DiBenedetto
33. Ryan Newman
34. AJ Allmendinger
35. Daniel Suarez
36. Alex Bowman
37. Erik Jones
38. Ty Dillon
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39. James Davison
40. Timmy Hill
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