NY Racing announced Monday that it will make an attempt to qualify for this weekend’s season-opening Daytona 500. The No. 44 car will feature a Grambling State University paint scheme.
The decision on the paint scheme came directly from the top. NY Racing is owned by Grambling State alum and former Tiger football player John Cohen. The NASCAR team owner appeared on a past episode of HBCU 101, a television show co-produced by HBCU Gameday.
The car will be driven by NASCAR veteran Greg Biffle.
“I’m really excited to have the opportunity to drive the Next Gen car and help NY Racing make its entry into the 2022 season,” Biffle said in a team release. “I’ve always said since the day I stepped away from full-time competition that I would return under the right circumstances.”
The Crafty Veteran
Biffle hasn’t raced full time since 2016 in the NASCAR cup series but he does have 19 victories to his credit. The first of those wins came at Daytona during the summer race in his rookie season.
Biffle won championships in the Xfinity Series during the 2002 season, and the Camping World Truck Series two years previously.
The 52 year old Biffle will be the oldest entrant attempting to qualify for the Daytona 500. Biffle won a truck race in 2019 at Texas Motor Speedway, his last race was in 2020 at a truck series race in Darlington.
Two chances to get into the race
Qualifying for the Daytona 500 is different than any other race on the circuit. It includes the traditional single car qualifying laps to set the front row, but then it gets interesting. NASCAR runs two dual races to set the rest of the field based on the race results. A detailed explanation can be found here. So if the Grambling race car isn’t fast enough on qualifying laps, it will have the opportunity to race its way in.
Single car qualifying happens on Wednesday night in prime time, with the dual races following on Thursday afternoon.
The Daytona 500 airs on Sunday at 2:30pm on Fox-TV.
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
