Faith is a fundamental component to who Chandler Smith is as a man, father, husband and racer, so it comes to no surprise that he leaned on his convictions in articulating the range of emotions from missing the Daytona 500 to winning in the Truck Series 24 hours later.
“Truthfully, I pray a certain prayer before every race, and most of my prayers are very consistent in the certain sense of I’m always going to submit myself to the Lord’s plan and whatever His will is for me,” Smith said. “And I am a firm believer that I wasn’t meant to be in the Daytona 500 — 110 percent.
“Once again, like I said, it’s a consistent thing that I pray about is I just want to submit myself to God and His divine will for me. When I reflect back from my career from start to finish, all the trials and tribulations, all the highs I’ve been through, when I reflect back and look, I see God’s hand, His provident hand in every single thing that that I’ve done, all the lessons that I’ve learned, even in life.”
That isn’t to say that Smith doesn’t get disappointed or frustrated in that process but he expressed conviction that it’s not his path to dictate. To his point, these were the same answers he gave after his premature elimination from the Truck Series playoffs last year – that it’s not his place to question a higher direction.
“Once again, tonight is even more of a testimony,” Smith said. “I could sit back and reflect back, you could even say this is maybe — we didn’t make it to the second round of playoffs last year, we had such a crappy first round and came down to New Hampshire in a must-win, and we finished second. And everyone was like, man, how are you not hanging your head by that?
“Once again, I believe that God has a certain plan and I’m going to submit myself to that plan. And when I reflect on tonight, I could definitely see His hand in it. A lot of people call this racing luck. I don’t believe in luck.”
Whatever Smith or any observer wants to call it, the final lap was genuinely chaotic in that he needed a push from Ty Majeski to be in position to win. He needed to survived some daring moves by Gio Ruggiero. Smith needed Kaden Honeycutt to get trapped without a pusher after leading in the closing lap. H e needed Christian Eckes and John Hunter Nemechek’s moves to not pan out.
All of that happened.
Ty Majeski: “Oh, just chaos, typical Daytona. I thought, for a field full of guys with nothing to lose, this race could have been a lot crazier than what it was. Just proud of the entire field and proud of Ford Racing. We stuck together all race and stuck with (Smith) at the end at got a Ford to Victory Lane. Happy to be here. Happy to be in this position with the 88 Menards F-150 and it’s a great way to start off a new partnership and a new era.”
Gio Ruggiero: “Everybody was just trying to do whatever it takes to win and that’s what I did for myself and my team. I probably would’ve pushed John Hunter to the win there, but he just wrecked me twice. I think overall as a group we need to do better as Toyotas. I thought me, Tanner and Taylor (Gray) worked really well together but everybody else just seemed like they were out there on their own. I definitely think we learned some things for the next superspeedway.”
JH Nemechek: “I haven’t seen the whole replay yet, but pretty frustrated with myself. Just hard to cover all of the lanes there – should have got to the middle and blocked (Ruggiero) faster than I did. Didn’t anticipate it quite as I probably should have off of turn four, but man, it was one heck of a race. I had a lot of fun all night.”
Kaden Honeycutt: “I got to the lead on the back stretch and I was locked on with (Ruggiero) and I guess he bailed and we disconnected and then he tried to block (Nemechek) and he almost got wrecked. And then I got lost in No Man’s Land. … You can’t be the leader coming to white. You’re just a sitting duck and it’s so easy to get locked out. It’s very hard to recover from it. Just didn’t didn’t make the right moves at the end of it, I guess.”
This was also the first race of the Chase for the Championship era in the Truck Series with everyone in the top-10 avoiding a major bullet that could deny them a chance to race for the title come the fall.
“Top five them to death,” Majeski said. “I feel like this format really suits me and what we do. Top five them to death and keep these Menards F-150s in one piece. We can’t afford DNFs early in the year like you could the last format. So that’s our motto – top-5 them to death.”
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– The Motorsport.com Team