Looking for a long shot this year’s Daytona 500? A potential feel-good story?
What if he was also a guy with a reputation for ease in big pack races with a few victories in the World Racing Center?
Oh, and also, he’s a 65 year old widower.
Carl Long, one here and there team owner In NASCARannounced Thursday that it had hired Mike Wallace – of the previous generation racing Wallace brothers – to compete in the Daytona 500 2025 in the team’s No. 66 Ford.
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In a press release, Wallace said he was excited to return to the Daytona 500 after “being away for a few years.”
A few years?
Rusty’s little brother has raced at Daytona once in the last 18 years, and that was ten years ago. To his credit, Mike was comfortable in superspeedway racing and recorded top 10 finishes in more than a quarter of his Daytona Cup Series starts (5 of 19). He last raced in NASCAR in 2020, when he competed in three Xfinity races.
He won twice at Daytona, once in the Xfinity Series and once in a truck, in Daytona’s inaugural Truck Series race in 2000, best known for Geoff Bodine’s fatal crash.
The NASCAR Wallace brothers have a long history
Mike’s brother Kenny ran his last Daytona 500 in 2008. His older brother Rusty, a NASCAR Hall of Famer, finished his career in 2005 with 55 career Cup victories.
The Wallace brothers are from the St. Louis area and ran a ton of Cup Series races together on the same Sundays. Needless to say, Mike might be the only brother to go green on February 16 at Daytona for the 67th running of the Great American Race.
And it would come 13 months after losing his wife of 44 years, Carla, to cancer last January.
The past year, Mike Wallace said, was a devastating year, but “2025 brings new excitement, starting with this announcement of the Daytona 500. They say you have to compete in it to win it, and we’re coming to Daytona with the chance to participate and then race to win the Daytona 500! »
This article originally appeared in the Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR: Mike Wallace aims for the 2025 Daytona 500 at 65 and widowed?
