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Daytona 500 weekend is here, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is looking to etch his name even further into history.
Winner of the 2023 race, Stenhouse would become the 13th driver to take home the Daytona 500 checkered flag twice.
After laying low for a couple of months into the season, Stenhouse is “pumped up” to return to competitive racing.
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Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 47 Kroger/Cottonelle Chevrolet, celebrates in victory lane after winning the 65th annual NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 19, 2023 in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
“I’m ready to go. My team, we have a lot of good things working with our team and everyone is ready to go,” Stenhouse told Pak Gazette Digital in a recent interview.
Stenhouse’s victory three years ago didn’t exactly change his own view of himself as a driver, but he knows the Daytona 500 is where legacies are made.
“I think it changed the way a lot of fans viewed me as a driver. I mean, any time you can put Daytona 500 champion next to your name, it’s something we’ve been striving for,” he said. “I mean, I ran my first 500 in 2012, and it took me until 2023 to check that box. It was a big win for a small team like ours. I felt like that really propelled us to have a great season that year, and I still feel like we’re taking momentum from that. Even though last season wasn’t the season we wanted, we’ll still be in the 500 this year very confident that we’re going to have a shot to go win.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 47 Kroger/Cottonelle Chevrolet, drives during practice for the 65th annual NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 17, 2023, in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
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Since then, Stenhouse has won just one race: the 2024 YellaWood 500 at Talladega. Winning in NASCAR, of course, is not easy and is a constant mental game for anyone in this sport.
“It’s a lot like golf, you know, a good season is two, three wins, right? You’re going to have guys jump into that five and six category, but it’s not a lot of them. You’re going to see guys make a living in the top 10, right? It’s tough,” Stenhouse said. “But I think for us, Hyak and our team, we have 35 employees, we’re a small team, we know our place, we know our resources, the things we have.
“If we get into the top 15 on a weekly basis, it’ll be a home run for us. But I think that’s what keeps us motivated, keeps us going, not getting discouraged, is, on the one hand, every week is a different course, a different track. And you just have to pick up your stuff if it was a bad week and move on to the next one.”
So how do you avoid that bad week? Or better yet, how can they have a successful week?
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 47 Kroger/Cottonelle Chevrolet, celebrates with his team after winning the 65th Annual NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 19, 2023, in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
“You need a car that you feel comfortable with, that you can take pushes, push people, that you can maneuver left and right very quickly. If you need to go up or down the track, do the blocks,” Stenhouse said. “But you also have to have a good strategy. You have to be able to save fuel, maintain your track position and then when it’s time to go down to the pits, your pit crew has to do the job when you go into the pits to get you out and make sure that you’re still in the lead when you come back out. And I would say that’s probably the hardest part of winning the Daytona.”
“So I would say lately, in the last three years, four years at Daytona, that gas man on that last pit stop has been kind of a game changer. It can save you seconds, and seconds are a lot. So get in position, avoiding accidents and chaos, you never know what’s going to happen.”
