It’s not just racing, crashing and excitement that will be experienced during the 2023 Daytona 500, the most precise race in auto sports in the NASCAR National Cup Series.
There is also inclusion and diversity that will be broken on the court as a winning team owned by a woman and an African-American emerges.
Another diversity action is the presentation of the next generation of drivers who will participate in NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program where several Hispanics are included.
Talents such as Mexicans Daniel Suaìrez and Kyle Larson have emerged from this program.
Also celebrities like Michael Jordan and Pitbull who co-own car teams and others like Derek Jeter, Pete Davidson, Larry Fitzgerald, Tiffany Haddish and Charlotte Flair enjoyed the experience.
“NASCAR is a unique experience. It exceeded all my expectations,” said Nicolás Arciniegas, a Sports Journalism student at Full Sail University located in Orlando. “It seems to me that there is no sport where both the journalist, the fans and the people who only come to see the event are involved on the track and the humility of the pilots themselves to take photos with some people. It is a sport that I did not know and it brought me an incredible image ”.
Arciniegas is from Bogotá, Colombia and learned that NASCAR began to attract youth with a program that includes university students.
And following a national and international search, NASCAR and Rev Racing recently announced the next generation of drivers who will participate in the Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program, selecting eight talented drivers listed below:
Lavar Scott, Andrés Pérez de Lara, Jaiden Reyna and Justin Campbell who return to Rev Racing for the 2023 season. While Paige Rogers, Eloy Sebastián López Falcón, Caleb Johnson and Nathan Lyons will debut in 2023.
“I was in the ARCA race that I am going to be doing in the United States. I am very excited about what can be done in NASCAR and preparing for this year’s season,” said Pérez de Lara, a native of Mexico City and 2022 NASCAR Mexico Challenge champion.
While López Falcón with INEX Legend Car Series and current champion of the Trucks category of Mexico commented: “With hard work and that emotion to do what you like, it’s like dreams come true,” said the Mexican native of Oaxaca and who is debuting this year on the show.
NASCAR’s Diversity Program was created in 2004 to develop and train ethnically diverse drivers and women both on and off the track.
NASCAR Cup Series drivers Bubba Wallace, Mexican Daniel Suárez and Kyle Larson are alumni of this program
Back in action and in the longest race in NASCAR history, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the Daytona 500 with his JTG Daugherty Racing team, co-owned by Jodi Geschickter, one of the few women on NASCAR teams, along with with African-American Bradley Lee Daugherty, former American professional basketball player, analyst and co-owner of the team.
At 212 laps (530 miles), this DAYTONA 500 was three laps and 7.5 miles longer than the 2020 race, which held the previous record.
The race was uneventful until lap 118, when contact from Kevin Harvick’s Ford flipped Tyler Reddick’s Toyota on its side in Turn 4. After bouncing off the outside wall, Reddick’s stalled No. 45 Camry came to a stop in the pit road entrance and was towed to the garage.
And it is that from the beginning the emotion was felt when the tires were swept, the sparks flew and the smoke expanded when the winning car and the defender of the race Austin Cindric, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, AJ Allmendinger, Denny Hamlin, Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney were involved in a chaotic crash.
It was a remarkable victory and a perfect highlight for the 75th anniversary of NASCAR racing. Stenhouse is the first driver from a one-car team to win the Great American Race since Trevor Bayne shocked the racing world with Wood Brothers Racing in 2011.
Chris Buescher finished fourth after leading 32 laps, the second most after Keselowski’s 42.
Polesitter Alex Bowman was fifth, followed by Allmendinger, Suárez getting better each year and today uncovered sixth place, followed by Ryan Blaney, Ross Chastain and rookie Riley Herbst.
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