Former University of Maryland Eastern Shore pitcher Christian Rose (Martinsburg, West Virginia) has a lot of affinity for the Daytona Beach area of Florida. It was both where he closed out his baseball career — a loss to Bethune-Cookman in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Tournament on May 17, 2018 — and where he ran his first Late Model race at New Smyrna Speedway.
So it seems fitting that the area will be the site of another milestone on Saturday (Feb. 19) at 1:30 when the now four-year veteran of motorsports will make his debut on one of the sport’s most famous tracks — Daytona International Speedway.
“It’s just very, very cool to pull out there onto the track knowing that all my heroes I ever watched went and raced there — and the amount of races I attended there as a fan,” Rose said. “It’s where I used to sneak into the garage. It all kind of came full circle, from sneaking into the garage to being on the racetrack is surreal.”
Rose will be racing his ARCA Series Toyota in the Lucas Oil 200 on the famous oval. The 80-lap race will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1. The race is the same day as the NASCAR Xfinity Series Beef It’s What’s for Dinner 300, which takes place in the evening.
“We run the day before the Daytona 500,” Rose said. “I love what NASCAR has done with the schedule putting the ARCA race before the Xfinity race on Saturday. We’ll have a lot more eyes on us out there both in person and across the country.”
That exciting Daytona debut is the second race that his team has locked in for the 2022 racing season, with the opening ARCA event coming on Tuesday (Feb. 15) at New Smyrna Speedway. Rose heads into the season still working to secure sponsorship, a reality of the racing business.
“We are really hoping to lock up a full-season sponsorship,” he said. “We are working on some things, but nothing is final and I can’t really talk about it yet. This week is what we hope is the start to continue to keep pushing and going forward.”
But he also begins the season with familiarity as he returns to Cook Racing — a relationship that served him well last season — as well as to the Menard’s ARCA Series where he finished 2021 as well.
“It’s a battle and a grind to stay on the racetrack with sponsorship,” he said “It’s just a tough business, but there are a lot of places and interesting tracks we’d love to go run this year and we are hoping to have the money for it. And, if the money presents itself, we are in a very good position with Cook Racing.
“We had two Top 10 ARCA runs last year and are looking to continue to build off that and to get better every week. I believe that we can fight for Top 5 finishes and wins and that is what our goal is going to be this season — constantly running Top 10, click on some Top 5’s and by the end of the year if we aren’t winning races I’m going to be disappointed myself.”
Rose took the time to chat about the upcoming race shortly after testing at the famous track, where on Day 2 the team was the fifth fastest car on the board out of 37 cars.
“I had never run at Daytona, but I had dreamt of it,” he said. “The team was all waiting to see what I looked like when I pulled back into the garage after testing and when they took the window net down I was smiling from ear-to-ear and they were all laughing.
“I was like this is freakin’ cool man.”
It didn’t come without some trepidation to start though. The 31-degree banking on the track’s turns is something to behold and nothing can prepare you for that first run.
“It was absolutely nerve wracking to start, but once I got up through the gears it was better,” Rose said. “When you see the banking going down the back stretch it’s like something you have never seen before. It is like you don’t think the car will turn to make that corner. Then I worked on it throughout the day and continued to get better, hugging the yellow line all the way around the racetrack. We continued to make the car better as we went and I was getting through the gears faster coming off pit road and towards the end of the test we were right where we needed to be.”
As the days tick by, counting down to the start of the 2022 season Rose is looking forward to it more by the minute. And two raced in the first week — one at Daytona — is a heck of a way to start.
“We could have a really good week or a really bad week,” he said. “At Daytona, you don’t know what is going to happen. We are going to try our best to stay out of trouble, but I know at Daytona you can get wrecked leading the race and you can get wrecked running in last place, so it’s one of those places that is a crapshoot. So we are going to go and try and play our strategy right and hopefully we are on the right end of it when the checkered flag goes up.”
Sports isn’t so much about change — it’s about preparation, timing, and hard work. In motorsports there is a certain level of luck especially on a track considered one of the most dangerous in the country.
But preparing for the blender he’ll see on Feb. 19 is something difficult for one reason in particular — drafting. When drafting, a driver gets close in line with one or more other cars in order to take reduced drag of the close grouping.
“Racing in the ARCA series I have never drafted and a bunch of these other guys out here never have either,” Rose said. “You watch the Cup guys and they are the best of the best, but you just have to have someone push somebody wrong and then next thing you know 15-20 cars are wrecking. We are rookies, so we are people who haven’t done it before, so for the most part it is going to be chaotic. ‘Crop shoot’ is not something you want to say going into the race, but it’s the best way to describe it from my experience watching there. Anyone can win it.”
During testing Rose got a small taste of what the car does in a draft, but that was just following one car during the run. He called the feeling “wild” but knows it wasn’t close to what he’ll see on race day.
“Nothing you can prepare for it,” Rose said. “There is no scenario you can put yourself in to show what it is like. You just have to do it, be on the top of your game, work the throttle, ride around and hope nothing crazy happens. There is a lot of skill and also a lot of luck at race tracks like Daytona and Talladega where you have to be in the right place at the right time and miss the wrecks.”
But first there is that little matter of Wednesday’s season opener.
“New Smyrna is a track I raced at a lot over the years,” Rose said. “A place raced a lot looking forward to getting out there a place we can contend for a top 5 if not a win.”