{"id":37031,"date":"2022-02-17T14:30:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T20:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=37031"},"modified":"2022-02-18T08:08:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T14:08:00","slug":"nascar-daytona-xfinity-camping-world-truck-series-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/17\/nascar-daytona-xfinity-camping-world-truck-series-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Daytona Xfinity \/ Camping World Truck Series Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Ty Gibbs set to start formidable NASCAR Xfinity campaign in Daytona oval debut<\/b><\/p>\n

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. \u2013 Now it\u2019s official.<\/p>\n

Three days before the NASCAR Xfinity season kicks off with the Beef. It\u2019s What\u2019s for Dinner. 300 at Daytona International Speedway, Joe Gibbs Racing announced what had been widely anticipated\u2014namely that Ty Gibbs will compete full-time in the No. 54 Toyota this year.<\/p>\n

Not only will Gibbs be a formidable contender for the Xfinity Series title, he\u2019ll also be a serious threat to win Saturday\u2019s season opener (5 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

Chris Gayle returns as Gibbs\u2019 crew chief. Together they won four times and posted nine top-five finishes in 18 Xfinity starts last year. As an 18-year-old, Gibbs won his debut race in the series on the Daytona International Speedway Road Course.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited about the 2022 season, and it\u2019s good to be back with Chris Gayle and most of the 54 guys,\u201d said Gibbs, who also won the ARCA Menards Series championship last season. \u201cWe had a lot of success last year part-time, and we hope to build off that\u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cI think our Monster Energy Toyota GR Supra will be good. I haven\u2019t run a NASCAR Xfinity race on the Daytona oval, but I know we\u2019ll have good equipment, and we\u2019ll be ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road to the Xfinity title won\u2019t be an easy one. Having switched to Kaulig Racing from JGR, Daniel Hemric is defending the championship last year, hoping to duplicate Tyler Reddick\u2019s 2018-2019 back-to-back titles with two different organizations (JR Motorsports and Richard Childress Racing).<\/p>\n

Five-time 2021 winner and Championship 4 contender AJ Allmendinger returns to Kaulig Racing. Allmendinger finished fifth in last year\u2019s season opener on the 2.5-mile Daytona oval and backed that up with a runner-up result in the August race at the World Center of Racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur last finish at Daytona was almost perfectly executed at the finish line, and my teammates at Kaulig Racing always do a fantastic job of working together throughout the entire race,\u201d Allmendinger said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDaytona is a special place for Matt Kaulig\u2014it’s where Kaulig Racing got its first win, so hopefully we can make him proud this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Rhodes to start NASCAR Truck title defense as reigning race winner<\/b><\/p>\n

A serendipitous start to the 2021 season at Daytona put ThorSport Racing driver Ben Rhodes in position to claim the title he eventually won at Phoenix Raceway in November.<\/p>\n

Rhodes won the season opener at Daytona International Speedway by .036 seconds over Jordan Anderson. He followed that a week later with an unlikely win on the Daytona Road Course, guaranteeing the driver of the No. 99 Tundra a spot in the postseason Playoff.<\/p>\n

Those were Rhodes\u2019 only two victories of the season, but he secured his first championship with a third-place result in the Championship 4 race at Phoenix, two spots ahead of title runner-up Zane Smith.<\/p>\n

Now Rhodes returns to Daytona with hopes of duplicating his victory in Friday night\u2019s NextEra Energy 250 (7:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel pretty good,\u201d Rhodes said when asked about his prospects for Friday\u2019s race. \u201cPractice will make me feel better. \u201cI have my own mental metric about how I think the truck is going to race aerodynamically and for stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to get around people and try certain moves that allow me to get a baseline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rhodes is a proven superspeedway racer, but he\u2019ll have plenty of competition for the Daytona trophy this year. John Hunter Nemechek, the 2021 regular-season champion, is back in the No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota, chasing the title that eluded him last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting off the season on the right foot is super important,\u201d Nemechek said. \u201cWe were able to have a great run last year. I feel like I\u2019ve really enjoyed speedway racing. I feel like we\u2019ve gotten our trucks better at superspeedway racing as of recent (races), had a shot to win Talladega, and we\u2019re taking that same truck to Daytona. So hopefully it has some speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another superspeedway stalwart, Matt DiBenedetto, has secured a ride with Rackley W.A.R. in the No. 25 Chevrolet and should be a major player in Friday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service Ty Gibbs set to start formidable NASCAR Xfinity campaign in Daytona oval debut DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. \u2013 Now it\u2019s official. Three days before the NASCAR Xfinity season kicks off with the Beef. It\u2019s What\u2019s for Dinner. 300 at Daytona International Speedway, Joe Gibbs Racing announced what had been widely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":37033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[160,181],"class_list":["post-37031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar-camping-world-truck-series","tag-nascar-xfinity-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/GettyImages-1371183344-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1706&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-9Dh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37032,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37031\/revisions\/37032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}