
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — After yet another setback, Beth Boles needed to do something. She could only handle so much as she watched her son, Conor Daly, attempt to make the Daytona 500, and she had hit her breaking point Thursday night during the second Duel qualifying race.
She decided to take a walk through the fan zone inside the infield at Daytona International Speedway, hoping this would give her some peace of mind and help her forget about all that transpired over the previous 24 hours. It had, to that point, been a bungled effort by The Money Team Racing, a part-time team owned by boxing legend Floyd Mayweather trying to haphazardly qualify for NASCAR’s biggest race.
There was the electrical short that burned a hole in the oil line of Daly’s car that prevented him from making a qualifying attempt during time trials Wednesday night. That meant he had no speed to fall back on should he stumble in Duel No. 2. Things didn’t get much better Thursday. Even before his race started, Daly’s radio wasn’t working, prompting a mad scramble by the team to correct the issue. Then as the No. 50 car rolled off pit road, Daly immediately informed the team that he had a bad vibration. It was so bouncy, he said, it felt like he was driving over a “SuperCross track.”
For someone whose only chance of advancing to Sunday’s race was to beat two other drivers, Austin Hill and Travis Pastrana, Daly’s odds had become bleak, at best. He was doing everything he could, but his effort was severely hamstrung by a team that looked ill-prepared.
“It was going so bad, and I just felt so sorry for him,” Boles said.
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. And on this night, Daly, a full-time competitor in the IndyCar Series making a rare foray into NASCAR, received a gift from the racing gods in the form of not one, but two fortuitous cautions.
(Photo: Getty Images)
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