BJ McLeod Secures Final Daytona 500 Starting Spot After Alfredo DQ

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Anthony Alfredo’s spot in the 68^th running of the Daytona 500 was short lived.

A little more than an hour after punching his ticket into the Great American Race with his finish in the second of the two Duels at Daytona International Speedway, word came down from the NASCAR Cup Series garage that the No. 62 Beard Motorsports Chevrolet had been disqualified, dropping Alfredo out of the running to make the Great American Race.

NASCAR Cup Series Managing Director Brad Moran explained that the rub came from a combination of two hoses that were not fastened properly, a transaxle cooling hose and a driver cooling hose.

“Any small open team, we don’t like to have these problems, but we do have to do our job, make sure there’s parity amongst the field and also parity amongst people trying to make the 500,” said Moran.

“During inspection, we noticed this hose, which is a transmission cooling, transaxle cooling hose. It comes off of the right-side quarter window and it’s supposed to go into the trans axle cooler and it needs to be air tight, it needs to be fastened. We have many rules, as you well know, that no parts can fall off the car, for obvious reasons.

“We don’t say what the intent is, but these parts have to be fastened properly and unfortunately this one piece wasn’t on the right side and there was also another hose disconnected for driver cooling, which affects airflow on superspeedway. We all know the importance of that.

“So, it’s unfortunate it was during the qualifying race, which we consider qualifying for our rule book and it was similar to [Noah Gragson’s] time being disallowed. In this case here, with it being a qualifying race, he was put to the back of the field which would take him out of the 500.”

Moran continued, noting these hoses are checked in pre-race/pre-qualifying inspection and the hoses were attached properly before Thursday night’s race. He added that the hoses in question were only fastened with tape and the tape did not hold, leading to the issues after the race.

Had this issue taken place during a race it would have also led to a disqualification, but with it being during qualifying, Alfredo’s time was disallowed and the spot in the Daytona 500 would go to the next driver up.

In this case, that driver was B.J. McLeod, who finished a spot behind Alfredo in 19^th, moving his No. 78 Chevrolet to the final spot on the starting grid for Sunday.

This will be McLeod’s sixth start in the Daytona 500 and first since 2023.