Stenhouse looking for more Daytona magic

Yesterday at 10:21 AM

Ricky Stenhouse made his debut on the 31-degree high banks of the Daytona 500 on February 27, 2012, finishing 21st with Roush Fenway Racing. He won the Great American Race in 2023, and heads into his 14th start at the event this weekend. And the driver of the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro is ready.

"I'm pumped," he said. "I feel good. I've been in Florida for about a week now and just feel confident. I came over here to Daytona on Sunday and I acclimated to the weather and got some practice in this morning. Man, I feel confident. We've put ourselves in position to win the Daytona 500 the last three years in-a-row: '22, '23 and '24. We've led each of them right at the end. Obviously, we won in 2023, but I feel like we've had the opportunity to win the last three. Hopefully we can just put ourselves in position again and get it done."

Under the leadership of new team principal Gordon Smith, JTG Motorsports was rebranded to Hyak Motorsports during the off-season. Stenhouse is encouraged by the team's progress.

"Yeah, it's good," he said. "We've just been plugging away. We kind of switched up a whole lot of personnel as far as on the competition side. We have hired a couple other people that I think are going to help elevate our program and our competition, so I'm looking forward to that. We've got a different front office, but Gordon is committed to racing. He loves racing, he loves motorsports, he rides dirt bikes. He's an adrenalin junkie. It's really cool to have him as our owner and looking forward to getting him his first win as a full-time owner.

“The biggest thing for me on Sunday is making sure that we execute our gameplan. Your gameplan can change throughout each stage, but you have the idea of what you want to do and how you want to run the race. We already have that down pat. We want to save fuel and miss wrecks and have fast pitstops. You do that and you'll have a great opportunity to win. And there are times where you feel that the draft might be getting a little too chaotic, so you kind of back out of it and let it kind of settle down. Then you jump back on your horse and try to get back to the front. And you want to be at the front with around 15 to 20 laps to go. You want to be up there battling for the lead so that you have a shot to win.

"I feel very confident about. In speedway racing, that is one of the key things at being good – uou have to have the mindset that you can win, and that you will win.”