Early Saturday night at Daytona, 40 drivers will line up their cars for the start of the Coke Zero Sugar 400, while a 41st will be settling into a recliner to watch like the rest of you. 

For just the third time this season, more than the allowed maximum number of starters have entered a Cup Series race. Given NASCAR’s weekly procedure, which grants automatic entry to the 36 “chartered” teams, four race-day spots are available, with five drivers (and their respective teams) hoping to earn one of them.

One of these guys won't start Saturday's race at Daytona
  • No. 44 Chevrolet, NY Racing Team: Joey Gase
  • No. 62 Chevrolet, Beard Motorsports: Casey Mears
  • No. 66 Ford, Garage 66: Gray Gaulding
  • No. 67 Toyota, 23XI Racing: Corey Heim
  • No. 78 Chevrolet, Live Fast Motorsports: Daniel Dye

Watching Casey Mears running the Talladega 500 again like pic.twitter.com/XxyVuCrTKc

— nascarman (@nascarman_rr) October 19, 2025

You read that right. Corey Heim, a two-time race winner in just eight part-time starts this year, must post one of the four fastest times among non-chartered entries in Friday’s qualifying. 

Odds are, that will happen, given the quality of his 23XI ride, but on-track bobbles occasionally happen in qualifying, and tenths of a second often decide such things.

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Daytona 500, Talladega also sent someone home

The high-water mark for race entries this year came at the Daytona 500, which is no surprise. Four drivers failed to qualify for that one. The other was at Talladega’s spring race, where, like this week, there was one too many entries. 

Casey Mears, one of this week’s hopefuls, was the odd man out at Talladega. He raced the Cup Series full time from 2003-16 and returned last year on a limited basis, trying to cobble together enough starts to reach 500 in his career. After five starts last year and three so far in 2026, he's currently three short.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Daytona ditching one driver for Coke Zero Sugar 400, and guess who it might be

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