Front Runners – 2023 Coke Zero Sugar 400, Daytona International Speedway

2023 Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway

Front Runners highlights the drivers that lead laps, run fast laps, and run inside the top 10, 5, & 3 the most at correlated track types.

There is nothing complicated about selection of relevant tracks for Daytona. Daytona and Talladega are the relevant tracks. As the two true drafting, superspeedway, plate, or whatever you want to call them, Daytona and Talladega race differently than any other type of track. Both tracks are around two and a half miles long and feature steep banking in the turns. Pack racing in the draft is the name of the game at these venues.

Although Atlanta has recently been reconfigured to race more like a superspeedway, Atlanta is not a comp for Daytona or Talladega. Atlanta is significantly shorter and while it does require drafting, it also requires more of the intermediate skill set. So ultimately Daytona and Talladega are relevant comps for Atlanta, but the inverse is not true. So we have one data set this week, the six races at Daytona and Talladega in the Gen 7 car.

The charts below are sorted by percentage of laps led by default. There are also a few more columns that you can choose to display but for ease of display those columns are hidden by default. Also included as the final column is the drivers average running position across all laps completed as the tracks in the data set.

A final note on this week’s data, there was a corruption of part of the 2022 Daytona 500 data, with a few random laps mid race missing.

Laps run inside the Top 10, 5, 3, and led as percentage laps driver completed at Daytona (3) and Talladega (3) in 2022 and 2023

wdt_ID Driver Make Races T10 Fin T10 Laps T10% T5 Fin T5 Laps T5% T3 Fin T3 Laps T3% Wins Led LL% Fast Laps FL% Laps Laps Run % Ave Running Pos
72 Ryan Blaney 6 4 491 43.45 3 338 29.91 2 259 22.92 0 139 12.30 15 1.66 1,130 99.47 14.81
73 Brad Keselowski 6 2 415 41.25 1 262 26.04 0 187 18.59 0 102 10.14 27 2.98 1,006 88.56 16.09
74 Erik Jones 6 3 526 51.57 0 301 29.51 0 176 17.25 0 76 7.45 21 2.32 1,020 89.79 11.47
75 Bubba Wallace 6 1 447 39.45 1 280 24.71 1 175 15.45 0 67 5.91 44 4.86 1,133 99.74 14.78
76 Chase Elliott 6 3 492 48.28 1 232 22.77 1 161 15.80 1 59 5.79 20 2.21 1,019 89.70 11.18
77 Denny Hamlin 6 1 502 51.02 1 224 22.76 0 149 15.14 0 56 5.69 13 1.43 984 86.62 12.43
78 Aric Almirola 6 1 463 41.60 1 298 26.77 0 201 18.06 0 63 5.66 17 1.88 1,113 97.98 13.02
79 Kyle Larson 6 1 515 53.09 1 272 28.04 0 183 18.87 0 48 4.95 17 1.88 970 85.39 10.58
80 Ross Chastain 6 3 364 38.44 2 187 19.75 1 111 11.72 1 45 4.75 19 2.10 947 83.36 14.54
81 William Byron 5 1 339 38.74 0 214 24.46 0 140 16.00 0 40 4.57 20 2.21 875 77.02 12.68
82 Kyle Busch 6 4 471 41.50 2 220 19.38 2 134 11.81 1 50 4.41 33 3.64 1,135 99.91 13.93
83 Martin Truex Jr 6 2 538 47.36 1 261 22.98 0 132 11.62 0 47 4.14 25 2.76 1,136 100.00 14.15
84 Daniel Suarez 6 3 256 25.20 0 139 13.68 0 77 7.58 0 39 3.84 20 2.21 1,016 89.44 17.86
85 Chris Buescher 6 2 381 38.84 2 208 21.20 1 158 16.11 0 34 3.47 22 2.43 981 86.36 15.99
86 Harrison Burton 6 0 194 27.40 0 92 12.99 0 60 8.47 0 24 3.39 7 0.77 708 62.32 15.89
87 Alex Bowman 5 2 237 25.27 1 127 13.54 0 85 9.06 0 31 3.30 21 2.32 938 82.57 17.66
88 Joey Logano 6 1 388 37.63 1 242 23.47 1 157 15.23 0 32 3.10 28 3.09 1,031 90.76 14.67
89 Christopher Bell 6 2 358 37.45 1 174 18.20 1 129 13.49 0 28 2.93 4 0.44 956 84.15 15.70
90 Austin Cindric 6 3 451 39.77 2 225 19.84 2 135 11.90 1 33 2.91 17 1.88 1,134 99.82 14.76
91 Tyler Reddick 6 1 199 23.86 1 76 9.11 1 50 6.00 0 24 2.88 13 1.43 834 73.42 17.07
92 Ricky Stenhouse Jr 6 1 293 28.92 1 122 12.04 1 62 6.12 1 24 2.37 43 4.75 1,013 89.17 16.70
93 Ryan Preece 2 0 159 42.97 0 89 24.05 0 52 14.05 0 6 1.62 8 0.88 370 32.57 14.08
94 Austin Dillon 6 2 147 13.78 2 43 4.03 2 34 3.19 1 12 1.12 22 2.43 1,067 93.93 20.50
95 Kevin Harvick 6 1 509 46.15 0 296 26.84 0 116 10.52 0 12 1.09 18 1.99 1,103 97.10 12.93
96 Corey LaJoie 6 0 128 13.21 0 34 3.51 0 15 1.55 0 8 0.83 20 2.21 969 85.30 21.16
97 Justin Haley 6 0 223 20.27 0 76 6.91 0 27 2.45 0 8 0.73 21 2.32 1,100 96.83 19.92
98 Ty Gibbs 4 0 119 20.34 0 68 11.62 0 42 7.18 0 4 0.68 10 1.10 585 51.50 20.56
99 Chase Briscoe 6 3 180 19.17 2 60 6.39 1 35 3.73 0 6 0.64 25 2.76 939 82.66 21.78
100 BJ McLeod 6 1 34 3.09 0 10 0.91 0 7 0.64 0 5 0.45 21 2.32 1,101 96.92 30.96
101 AJ Allmendinger 2 1 60 14.74 0 13 3.19 0 3 0.74 0 1 0.25 15 1.66 407 35.83 22.54
102 Michael McDowell 6 3 291 27.30 1 109 10.23 1 19 1.78 0 2 0.19 33 3.64 1,066 93.84 20.78
103 Ty Dillon 6 0 116 13.89 0 17 2.04 0 8 0.96 0 1 0.12 29 3.20 835 73.50 19.33
104 Todd Gilliland 6 2 282 27.35 0 107 10.38 0 41 3.98 0 1 0.10 18 1.99 1,031 90.76 17.49
105 JJ Yeley 2 0 10 2.63 0 4 1.05 0 1 0.26 0 0 0.00 7 0.77 380 33.45 26.87
106 Austin Hill 1 0 2 1.02 0 1 0.51 0 1 0.51 0 0 0.00 12 1.32 196 17.25 32.44
107 Riley Herbst 2 1 4 0.98 0 2 0.49 0 1 0.25 0 0 0.00 13 1.43 408 35.92 28.74
Driver Make Races T10 Fin T10 Laps T10% T5 Fin T5 Laps T5% T3 Fin T3 Laps T3% Wins Led LL% Fast Laps FL% Laps Laps Run % Ave Running Pos

*Chandler Smith, Josh Berry, and Brennan Poole have not started any of the 6 races in this data set and so they are not on this chart.

Thanks for checking out the Front Runners! Let’s WIN THE RACE!

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Greg Matherne

Director of Betting Content, WIN THE RACE. NASCAR DFS & Betting.