Travis Pastrana has done backflips on motorcycles and wild stunt driving, but he's going into the Daytona 500 with no practice and has to perform. The stakes are high.
“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.
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.
“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.
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