Daytona 500 Winner Had 2-Word Note Taped in His Car

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has had a rollercoaster career in which he had to fight to keep a job, lost his seat at a NASCAR powerhouse team, and opened his 14th season mired in a five-year losing streak. To say this Daytona 500 was a milestone race was an understatement—for Stenhouse and for NASCAR. Stenhouse won the Daytona 500 in double overtime and under caution on Sunday in the longest running of "The Great American Race." The two overtimes pushed the 65th running of the race to a record 212 laps—a dozen laps beyond the scheduled distance and a whopping 530 miles, reports the AP.

It provided anxious moments before a landmark celebration: The first Daytona 500-winning team co-owned by a Black man and a woman. Stenhouse’s win for JTG Daugherty Racing was the third of his career. JTG is the first single-car team to win the Daytona 500 since The Wood Brothers Racing did it with Trevor Bayne in 2011. The team is owned by Tad and Jodi Geschickter along with former NBA player Brad Daugherty. Daugherty, who left the track earlier Sunday with an eye irritation, is the first Black car owner to win the race.

To get to the victory lane Sunday, JTG stuck with Stenhouse and even reunited him this season with the crew chief who led him to a pair of Xfinity Series titles years ago. Mike Kelly's biggest task was convincing Stenhouse that he can indeed win races. So ahead of the Daytona 500, he taped a note inside the Chevrolet. The message? The team believes in the driver. "When I woke up today I told myself that I was going to do something that I used to do for Ricky when we had tough days," Kelly said. "I just wrote him a note that only he would see. It was on top of the roll bar in front of him, and it just said, 'We believe.' That's been our motto the whole offseason—that we believe."

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Stenhouse's only other victories came in 2017, at Talladega and the summer race at Daytona. Now the 35-year-old from Olive Branch, Mississippi, has a repeat win at Daytona in NASCAR's biggest race of the season. "I think this whole offseason Mike just preached how much we all believed in each other. They left me a note in the car that said they believe in me and to go get the job done," Stenhouse said. "Man, this is unbelievable. This was the site of my last win back in 2017. We’ve worked really hard. We had a couple shots last year to get a win and fell short." (The AP has more on how other drivers fared here.)