2026 Daytona 500 preview: Your cheat sheet to the Great American Race - ESPN

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — For 68 years, the world's greatest stock car racers have descended upon the white sands of eastern Florida to compete for the most coveted checkered flag their sport has to offer. Actually, they have come here for much longer than that — high-horsepower machinery first started barreling down the actual sands of the actual beach all the way back in 1902. But in 1959, when Big Bill France rounded up every bulldozer he could find and constructed a 2.5-mile D-shaped oval with 31 degrees of banking, stacked 40 feet wide and 20 feet tall, the racing moved inland and the Daytona 500 was born.

Much like last weekend's big NFL game in Santa Clara, a sizable percentage of this weekend's audience will be those who watch only one NASCAR race per year. Perhaps you are one of those people. Or perhaps you are one of my people, who have a bronze Richard Petty bust on their desk (I totally do) and describes the result of any and all failures around the house as «it done blowed up.»

No matter what your level of NASCAR knowledge, this Daytona 500 preview is for you. A cheat sheet of Great American Race facts and figures that will allow you to look up from your nachos this Sunday and blow the minds of your friends and family with your sudden dialed-in setup of gearhead smarts.

So, slip on that vintage Mark Martin No. 6 Viagra Ford T-shirt that your giggling teenager paid way too much for at the local thrift store (I could have made a fortune from all the stuff I took to Goodwill in the early 2000s), dab a little WD-40 behind your ears, throw an old tire in the backyard firepit and read ahead.

My annual prerace weekend evening garage stroll asking the folks in the splashy firesuits, «Well, who are you gonna have to beat