Yahoo Autos The Daytona 500 Will Be Travis Pastrana's Biggest Challenge Yet
In less than two weeks, legendary stunt driver and extreme-sports star Travis Pastrana will roll off pit road at Daytona International Speedway for a roughly 200-mph qualifying attempt at the Daytona 500. It’ll be the first time he drives the NASCAR Cup Series’ new race car at speed.
Right now, Pastrana’s doing a media tour for the race—telling outlets like us how excited he is to run it with 23XI Racing, the Cup team owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, and his sponsor, Black Rifle Coffee Company. But when Pastrana climbs into the car and he’s finally alone with his thoughts, what will they be?
“‘This was such a good idea three months ago,’” he laughed.
Pastrana will drive the No. 67 car for 23XI and join the team’s full-time drivers, Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace. But while Reddick and Wallace will have guaranteed spots in the race due to NASCAR’s charter system, Pastrana will have to qualify his way into one of four “open” spots against drivers like seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson—and he’ll have to do it with no practice beforehand.
“The first time I'm ever in a Cup car over second gear, it's going to be at Daytona—which I've never driven a Cup car on—in a qualifying run,” Pastrana said, adding that in his first run on the simulator, he spun exiting pit road. “Luckily, it'll be by myself. But any kind of slide, miscalculation, or movement in the wheel, and I'm qualifying way back in the field.
“I'm nervous talking about it. When I get the adrenaline going and I'm really pumped up or nervous about something, I talk faster. Even during this interview, just thinking about it, I’m talking faster. I'm missing words.”
The 500 will be Pastrana’s first NASCAR attempt since 2020, when he ran two races in the third-tier Truck Series, and his first time at a superspeedway since he ran a full season in the second-tier Xfinity Series in 2013. That year, Xfinity ran three superspeedway races: Daytona twice and Talladega once. He qualified fourth and second at Daytona, and on pole at Talladega.
Pastrana said he “got a little flack from the NASCAR community” about running just the 500 instead of a full season, but he thinks the beauty of big races is that “you get so many drivers from different genres, and you have to qualify your way in.”
“Ten years ago, the main goal was to get to the Daytona 500,” Pastrana said. “But I got lost thinking that maybe I could make a career out of NASCAR. The intricacies of rear-wheel drive, pavement, and drafting … is just very foreign. Dirt bikes and rally cars, it's under 100 miles an hour most of the time.
“But it was so fun, and the drivers all took me under the wing. In the pits, you have drivers who get along with other drivers and drivers who very much don't get along with other drivers, but I was able to kind of bounce through all of these groups. Everyone, whether they were on my team or not, went out of the way to really help me do the best I could in NASCAR. That was something I didn't expect.”
The idea to run the 500 came last year when Pastrana got a call from Robby Benton, who spotted for him in NASCAR a decade ago. Benton mentioned the new Next Gen Cup car, which debuted in 2022 with a sequential shifter in place of the old H-pattern.
“He was like, ‘You drive sequential for rally. You could probably do pretty well,’” Pastrana said. “Then just talking to Denny Hamlin, he's like: ‘Yeah, I botched my qualifying because I couldn't get through the gears well.’ I thought: ‘Man, last year would've been a great year to do the 500, because a lot of the guys hadn't really figured it out.’
“Now, not so much, but it did put it kind of back on my radar.”
Pastrana decided to go for it. He put feelers out to Cup teams, and he said 23XI was the first that responded without just saying: “Sure, bring the money and we’ll get you a car” or “Well, the car's not as great, but half the field crashes out, so just stay at the back.”
“I'm like: ‘If I’m going to do this, I want to have a vehicle that I feel is competitive,’” Pastrana said. “I really feel like with Toyota and the 23XI team, I'm not getting the third-best or fourth-best, or the whatever's left over from the other cars.”
Pastrana’s car is actually prep work for 23XI. The team had a big shakeup last year when Kurt Busch decided to step away from full-time NASCAR racing while sidelined for a concussion, which, in part, led 23XI to bring on Reddick a year early in his place. The team is working on a third car should Busch want to return in a part-time capacity, and Pastrana is a trial run for it.
Daytona is also a superspeedway, where pack racing means a flinch can be catastrophic and drafting alliances can decide the winner. Since Toyota has fewer cars on track than Chevrolet or Ford, thus fewer allies, having an extra car with Pastrana can help.
“With 23XI, you have very competitive owners,” Pastrana said. “You have a race-car driver in Denny, and you’ve got Michael Jordan, who's the most competitive human being on the face of the Earth. These guys want to win, and they honestly believe I can help them do that, even if it's not me who’s getting there.”
Pastrana is a showman, and he has everything from X Games medals to a household name to show for it. But he said the Daytona 500 is the only race he’s ever done “where the goal is just to be a part of it.”
“Despite my reputation now, it's not about putting on a show,” Pastrana said. “This is about racing. These are the moments I live for, to be perfectly honest. When the helmet's on, you take that breath and just smile.
“If I do what I first did in the first simulator lap, where I just literally spun it off of pit road and almost backed into the wall, I will have every single NASCAR person saying: ‘I told you so. Why are you out there?’ But that's not going to happen.
“I'm gonna put in the homework. I'm gonna do everything I can. And if everything breaks loose in front of me—hell, let's go for it.”
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