NASCAR: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Calls Winning Daytona 500 His 'Biggest Accomplishment' (Exclusive)

NASCAR: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Calls Winning Daytona 500 His 'Biggest Accomplishment' (Exclusive),Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will never forget what he did in February.

NASCAR: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Calls Winning Daytona 500 His ‘Biggest Accomplishment’ (Exclusive)

In February, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the Daytona 500, and it was the first NASCAR Cup Series race victory for him since winning the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway in 2017. Winning the Daytona 500 is big for any driver, but the victory for Stenhouse was special since it was the 65th running of the race as well as NASCAR’s 75th anniversary. PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to Stenhouse about what the victory means to him.

“It’s definitely my biggest accomplishment,” Stenhouse exclusively told PopCulture. “I think back and looking at my career, you always remember your first win. That was always something that I wanted to get checked off the bucket list as your first win in the Cup Series. We won back-to-back Xfinity Series championships in 2011, 2012, and those were big accomplishments, but there’s nothing like winning the Daytona 500 for me or our partners or this race team. And that was a good way to kick off the start of the season.”

“It was the longest Daytona 500 that’s ever been had, and luckily for us, we had just enough gas to finish. I ran out. I didn’t get to do a burnout celebrating. I just had to get pushed to Victory Lane with no gas. So that was a bummer. But yeah, it was a wild race.”

The Daytona 500 is the Super Bowl for NASCAR, which means there’s a lot of press before and after the race. After Stenhouse won, the week for him was intense since he had to celebrate the win, do press and get ready for the next race which was in California.

“The week was slammed for me,” Stenhouse said. “My guys, we celebrated in Daytona. We had media and things to do on Monday, and then my guys actually came back home Monday. I don’t know if they went to the shop on Monday. But they were back in the shop Tuesday working hard and getting ready, because our truck and trailer had to leave for Fontana out in California on I think Wednesday morning. So they had to leave early. And so my guys had a lot of work to do. But for me, we went to Disney, we went to Chicago, we came back here to the shop, we went to New York, and then we ended up in California. So it was really busy, not a lot of sleep. I think I averaged about three hours of sleep that week, but I felt well rested, obviously running on adrenaline and it was an awesome week.”

On Aug. 26, the drivers will return to Daytona for the Coke Zero Sugar 400. Stenhouse could make history again, becoming the first driver in 10 years to win the two Cup Series races at Daytona International Speedway in the same year.

“That’s definitely a goal of mine and ours as a team,” Stenhouse revealed. “I’ve won the summer race before, back in 2017. So now we just got to do it after winning the 500 earlier this year. And I feel like we got a strong shot at it. My guys have been building some really good race cars. But Daytona is all about staying out of trouble for a big portion of the race and just trying to make sure you put yourself in position at the end of the race like we did for the Daytona 500 back in February. And I feel really confident about that.”

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