I can’t imagine why NASCAR would run the Daytona 500, its biggest race, with one set of rules, and then abandon those rules for the rest of the season. It’s like telling the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams they have to play the Super Bowl with the players on the 2017 roster.

Okay, it’s not exactly the same because other sports have their biggest spectacle at the end, not the beginning, of the season. It’s not the Patriots and Rams. It’s like the Patriots and Rams. A simile, not a metaphor.

NASCAR Drive for Diversity pit crew members Brehanna Daniels and Breanna O’Leary will make their DAYTONA 500® debut together as tire-changers on Cody Ware’s No. 52 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 during Sunday’s race at Daytona International Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

In doing so, Daniels and O’Leary will become the first female graduates of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Pit Crew Development Program to go over the wall in the Great American Race®.

NASCAR Drive for Diversity pit crew members Brehanna Daniels and Breanna O’Leary will make their DAYTONA 500® debut together as tire-changers on Cody Ware’s No. 52 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 during Sunday’s race at Daytona International Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

In doing so, Daniels and O’Leary will become the first female graduates of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Pit Crew Development Program to go over the wall in the Great American Race®.

If the driver who (apparently) wins a NASCAR race is in a car deemed illegal afterwards, the outcome will be overturned.

Whoa.

In most sports, this would require no elaboration. It would go without saying. I know many will cite a recent officials’ call (actually, lack thereof) that affected the outcome of a game and the presence of one team and not another in the Super Bowl.

It’s really not the same thing. In fact, most of the time, when auto racing is compared to other sports, it’s not the same thing. One doesn’t have to cite apples and oranges. It’s ballplayers and drivers, or coin flips and caution flags, or high-sticking and driving below the yellow line.

MAVTV will air 12 (2-hour) ARCA races LIVE in 2019. This is the third year of a broadcast agreement between MAVTV Motorsports Network and ARCA (Automobile Racing Club of America), and the first time that MAVTV will broadcast 'live' all 12 races.

MAVTV’s broadcast schedule begins at 7:00pm ET on March 9 (re-air at 10:00pm ET), with ARCA’s return to the Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida. This is the opening race for the entire 11 event Sioux Chief Short Track Challenge sponsored by Sioux Chief Manufacturing. The General Tire Superspeedway Challenge from the 1.25-mile oval at Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, IL, takes the 12th broadcast slot.

NASCAR today announced several initiatives and procedural updates for the 2019 season, which officially opens this weekend at Daytona International Speedway with an action-pack Sunday double-header -- Daytona 500 Busch Pole Award Qualifying (12:10 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) and the Advance Auto Parts Clash at Daytona (3 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
 
Among the announcements made today was NASCAR’s plan to move its thorough post-race inspection to the race track immediately following each national series race. If a vehicle fails post-race inspection, it will be disqualified, resulting in a last-place finish and the loss of all benefits from the win/finish, as well as any stage points. All other vehicles would move up in the finishing order under this scenario.

When I started writing about NASCAR in 1993, occasionally what I wrote was the talk of the track the following week. 

That’s because the weekly paper that then employed me was distributed at the track. Then along came Jayski, or, as it was then called, “Jayski’s Silly Season Page,” an online compendium of racing information that was updated daily beginning in 1996 by Jay Adamczyk. 

Jayski changed everything. All of a sudden, what I wrote was widely known the next day. The site gave NASCAR coverage immediacy. It gave guys like me, by then working for the newspaper in Gastonia, N.C., attention much greater than ever before.

Fans who can’t wait for Atlanta Motor Speedway’s NASCAR weekend next month are in luck: they’ll be able to satisfy their high-speed needs during a test for select NASCAR teams next week.

The Speedway’s grandstands will open free of charge from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, January 28, and Tuesday, January 29, for anyone who wants to watch the test. Fans attending the test will enter the grandstands through Gate 15.

The Rolex 24 is this weekend. I went to Daytona Beach early a few years because I could rent a condo for a month for less than a motel room for 10 days, and I could hole up and crank out all the advance work back in the days when newspapers ran preseason NASCAR sections. I’d take all the transcripts and notes from the media tour back in the days when there was one of those, too. Then the Rolex 24 moved from the first of February to the end of January, and so there went the feasibility of going to it.

But I was there for the last February of Dale Earnhardt’s life, and I saw it all. The last February, windswept and chilly, was the happiest I ever saw Earnhardt, and I don’t subscribe to the theory that he had some premonition of his death. I think he was happy because he and his son had become closer. They drove together in a yellow Corvette during the Rolex. The greatest driving performance of Earnhardt’s life, in my estimation, was during the International Race of Champions two days before his last.

Dominic Scelzi kicks off his season early this year as one of his favorite tracks will host an event this weekend.

Stockton Dirt Track in Stockton, Calif., has a 360ci winged sprint car show on tap Saturday. It's a track where Scelzi has four feature triumphs, including winning the 3rd annual Jimmy Sills Classic last year.​