“Mickey win”- NASCAR Twitter reacts to Zane Smith’s back-to-back Daytona Truck series opener win

Zane Smith is the defending Truck Series Champion.

Zane Smith (Credits: NASCAR)

Zane Smith is having the time of his life at Daytona International Speedway. The No:38 Front, Raw Motorsports driver, scored his consecutive Truck Series season opener at Daytona. He won the rain-shortened NextGen Energy 250, running 79 of the 1-00 scheduled laps. Smith has already locked a place in the Daytona 500 with Front Raw open car and will also start Saturday’s Xfinity race.

“I tried to play that race as smart as possible. When it was getting really aggressive, I was getting out of it. I knew these patches of rain were a thing in our Ford meeting earlier in the day. I didn’t think it would stick around for this long,” Zane Smith said about the win.

“I just wanted to be there after Stage 2 was over. You never know what can happen. A huge, huge shoutout to all the race fans. I apologize so much that we couldn’t go back to racing for you all. Hopefully, we’ll give you guys a good show tomorrow (in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race), and I’ll be out there Sunday—so super excited about that,” Smith added.

Tanner Gray survived some miner Car damages to score P2, while Christian Eckes, Colby Howard, and Grant Enfinger earned the remaining positions in the top 5. Star names such as the likes of Rajah Caruth and Hailie Deegan exited the race early after getting into multi-car crashes. 2021 Truck champion Ben Rhodes’s crash in the final lap ended the proceeding at Daytona.

OFFICIAL: @ZaneSmith WINS the rain-shortened NASCAR Truck Series season opener at Daytona. Retweet to congratulate the No. 38 team! #HotPass pic.twitter.com/N7rKNwooHV
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 18, 2023

Zane Smith is one of the front-runners to win the 2023 title, and the defending Champion will be hoping to score more wins and front-raw finishes as he did in 2022. He is one of the sport’s promising prodigies, and he can potentially land a Cup or Xfinity seat for 2024 if he can perform consistently.

In case you missed it: Chandler Smith and Austin Hill blame themselves for Daytona 500 DNQ

How NASCAR Twitter reacted to Zane Smiths’ win

Fans had a mixed reaction to Zane Smiths’ win as it came due to a rain delay. Fans were disappointed as NASCAR decided not to run the remaining 25 laps of the race, though there was an opportunity. The causation-ridden race had just 25 laps of green flag racing, which infuriated fans more.

Wish it could have ended under green, but definitely enjoyed the race tonight otherwise.
— Charles Russell (@ChuckRussell87) February 18, 2023

The r̶e̶i̶g̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ raining champ strikes again!
— sling (@Sling) February 18, 2023

Absolutely pitiful you literally had so much time to get this race in and you failed what’s the point of Jet dryers if your not gonna finish the race and when are y’all gonna let the drivers make the decision because I’m sure 99.9 percent of those drivers wanted to race
— Richie Brinker (@brinker_richie) February 18, 2023

Absolutely horrible race, horrible officiating, just horrible. NASCAR should be ashamed
— Frankie Saupp (@FrankieSaupp) February 18, 2023

https://twitter.com/JrkJets/status/1626797013420449794

39 green flag laps. 40 caution.

You shouldn’t be able to call a race unless half of laps are at least under green. Run them in the morning. But at least xfinity and cup practice got squeezed in. How to justify this to sponsors much less sell to new leads?
— Brian (@bjbstr21) February 18, 2023

https://twitter.com/RacinMan47/status/1626797310456877056

https://twitter.com/traviszick/status/1626809026934714372

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#About the Author

Justin P Joy

(5210 Articles Published)

Justin P Joy is a Motorsports writer and editor at FirstSportz. He has been a motorsport journalist since 2020 and has published over 4500 articles. Justin has extensively covered two NASCAR, Formula One, and Moto GP seasons for FirstSportz. He has invested more than a decade of his life on Motorsports, first as a fan and later as a dedicated writer. Justin’s in-depth knowledge of Motorsports and his experience as a fan make his writing resonate with most racing fans worldwide. Justin's love for racing started when he discovered Moto GP at the age of 8. That love later guided him into the world of Formula 1. He fell in love with NASCAR after watching Tom Cruise’s “Days of Thunder” and has been an avid follower of the premier stock car racing series since. He has also been investing his time to exploring WEC, WRC, Formula E, Extreme E, and IndyCar in a bid to deeply understand the culture and history of Motorsports to present a unique perspective to the fans.

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