DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- As crews pushed their dinged and dented machines back to the Daytona garage after Thursday night's Duel 150 qualifying races, you could almost hear everyone's high school science teacher booming over the public-address system that lines the garage. The one with the pencils in her frazzled hair, looking over her glasses through the smoke of a just-exploded chemistry experiment.
"So ... what did we learn here?"
When the drivers and crew chiefs were asked that question as they made that walk off pit road, these are the four topics that came up the most, one for each turn at the World Center of Racing.
1. No one has a handle on handling
New ride-height rules have the cars dragging tail and spraying sparks off the asphalt. Half the field is running a brand-new car in the pointy-nosed Chevrolet Camaro. It looked as if whenever a driver dove into a lower lane it would suck the car in front of it completely around (see: Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s two incidents in Duel 1). "You didn't even have to touch 'em to make that happen," observed Duel 2 winner Chase Elliott. All of the above made for a lot of bouncy, dicey laps. It also led to a lot of very intense postrace conversations between drivers and crew chiefs about what needs to be done to improve those conditions before Sunday's Daytona 500 (2:30 p.m. ET, Fox). And yes, that includes the cars that ran up front. "As cool as it was tonight, this was the best it's going to be on Sunday," said Erik Jones, who rallied to finish third in Duel 2 after an early incident. "It'll be 20 degrees hotter at the start of the 500 and that race is 140 laps longer. So, everything that was a problem tonight will be multiplied Sunday."
Kevin Harvick, who finished one spot ahead of Jones, was more pointed. "We can't run like that Sunday. No one can. The good news is we were really, really fast. But that only masked what was really happening. I watched the first race and the rear end of my Ford wasn't as light as some of those guys, but it was certainly lighter than I would want it to be."
2. The youngsters have arrived
Harvick and Jones finished behind Elliott, 22, who earned his third Duel victory in three tries at Daytona International Speedway. Ryan Blaney, 24, won the first Duel, pushed to the finish by best bud Darrell Wallace Jr., 24, making his first superspeedway start in a Cup series car. Their 1-2 finish was broken up at the line when Wallace was edged by Joey Logano, who at 27 now feels like a crusty old veteran. "I think that a lot of people went into tonight thinking everyone was going to take it easy because there weren't eliminations or anything," said Logano, who won the Daytona 500 three years ago. "But these young guys, they weren't going to let that happen, were they?"
3. You still gotta have help
Every time the feeling began to set in that the Duels were becoming a conga line, someone somewhere started trying something, anything, to keep that from happening (see: Stenhouse, again, and the entire first half of Duel 2). But even with the new rules, new rides and new faces, at its core, restrictor-plate racing is still restrictor-plate racing. "Every year we come down and stuff is different, but then again, it isn't," said Clint Bowyer, who finished fourth in Duel 2. "If there's no one in that other line, don't go there, or find someone who will go there with you. Otherwise, bye-bye, bud!"
4. The main course is always better than the appetizer
What's as much of a Daytona Speedweeks tradition as champagne sprays and victory laps? A total overreaction by fans, media and, yes, some competitors to what happened in the Duels as well as last weekend's Clash all-star event. But the 500 is never what those were, if for no other reason because the field is literally twice as large as it was for Thursday night's doubleheader events. "It's pretty simple math," said Kyle Busch, who finished fifth in Duel 2. "There's more people to work with. There's more lanes. There's more of anything."
That includes money, accolades and the size of the trophy, the most cherished trophy in stock car racing.
"All we can do is dial it in the best we can over the next two days," Busch's teammate, Denny Hamlin, said of the three practice sessions remaining between now and Sunday's green flag. "But I'm just talking about the cars. The drivers will be plenty dialed in. All I want is for my car to peak with 10 laps to go, have me in position, and then let's go see what everyone has when it realty matters."