Casey Mears’ Experience and Beard Motorsports’ Superspeedway Prowess Converge for Saturday Night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400
MT. PLEASANT, Mich. (Aug. 26, 2026) – At Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, sometimes the smartest move a driver can make is knowing when not to make one at all.
For Casey Mears, 28 career NASCAR Cup Series starts around the 2.5-mile superspeedway have provided plenty of opportunities to learn that lesson.
There is the speed, the drafting and the side-by-side racing at nearly 200 mph. But there is also something less tangible – learning to read the room.
“You know, it’s a lot of reading the room in real time,” said Mears, who’ll be back behind the wheel of the No. 62 Gracie Foundation Chevrolet for family-owned Beard Motorsports in Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400. “When guys are getting a little crazy or you feel like the pack is prime for a crash, sometimes you just back out of it and try to leave yourself out of it to the best of your ability.”
That instinct has served Mears well at a track where he posted four consecutive top-10 finishes and five straight top-12s from 2013 through 2015. He finished second to Jimmie Johnson in the 2006 Daytona 500 before returning later that summer to finish seventh.
More telling is his ability to survive. Mears has finished 25 of his 28 Cup races at Daytona. The key to just three DNFs, he said, is understanding how to avoid turning someone else’s wreck into his own.
“When you’d see a crash, you’d get on the brakes really hard to try to avoid it,” Mears said. “Well, yeah, there’s somebody else behind you going 200 miles an hour.”
Instead, whenever possible, Mears tries to maintain momentum after clearing an incident, reducing the chance of being collected by a driver behind him.
“You just kind of have to read the crash,” he said. “As soon as I’m roughly clear, I try to keep momentum up and not get taken out from behind.”
It is a philosophy that could serve him particularly well behind the wheel of the Beard Motorsports Chevrolet.
Founded as a family passion project by the late Mark Beard Sr., Beard Motorsports has built its NASCAR identity around doing more with less. Since its Cup Series debut in the 2017 Daytona 500, the Michigan-based team has become a fixture at Daytona and Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, where its limited-schedule approach has repeatedly produced results that belies the organization’s size.
The No. 62 has five top-10 finishes in 13 starts on the Daytona oval, including a seventh-place run in the 2024 Coke Zero Sugar 400. Noah Gragson’s fifth-place finish in the August 2022 race stands as the team’s best Daytona result. That history gives Mears confidence.
“The Beard family has always brought a fast racecar to the superspeedways,” he said. “Anytime you have a little bit more speed, it just makes it easier to do your job at the superspeedways.”
Mears already experienced Daytona once this season, driving for Carl Long in February’s season-opening Daytona 500. After qualifying 17th, he had to race his way into the field through his Duel qualifying race, surviving a last-lap scramble to earn his place in The Great American Race.
“It was pretty amazing to make it the way we did,” he said.
Race day ended with a 32nd-place finish after an early incident damaged the car, but the experience added another chapter to his Daytona notebook.
Mears believes the closing laps are where that experience can become most valuable. With 15 to 20 laps remaining, he wants to be inside the top-10 – preferably the top five – where he can take advantage of the runs developing through the pack. Even then, he said patience can be the better strategy.
“If you’re not inside that top-10 with that many laps to go, sometimes it’s best just to be toward the rear of the field, dodge the last crash, and then pick off a good result at the end,” Mears said.
This weekend also brings an added unknown. NASCAR has introduced a horsepower and spoiler change for the Daytona race, with teams having limited opportunity to learn exactly how the cars will respond over a full run.
“Nobody really knows how these cars are going to respond and react at the end of a run,” Mears said. “There could be some surprises. You’ve just got to think on your feet.”
Saturday also carries a different kind of significance.
The Coke Zero Sugar 400 will mark Mears’ 498th career Cup Series start, followed by No. 499 at Talladega on Oct. 25, and the milestone 500th at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 8.
When Mears stepped away from fulltime Cup Series competition after the 2016 season, reaching 500 starts was hardly a certainty. His return to selected races has now put the milestone within reach, thanks in large part to the opportunity created through Beard Motorsports and longtime friend and former car owner Bob Germain.
With that milestone approaching, Mears also recognizes that Daytona represents one of his final Cup Series starts at a track that has been part of his career for more than two decades.
“This stretch could be the last three races that I ever run,” he said.
That realization has not diminished the competitive fire. Instead, he said, it has allowed him to appreciate racing in a different way.
“I’ve had a really good time just being at the racetrack, working with the guys, being a part of motorsports again and relearning what I’ve always loved my whole life,” he said.
Still, he has no intention of simply soaking in the atmosphere Saturday night. Mears believes a top-10 is a realistic goal for the No. 62 Chevrolet – and if experience, speed and timing all converge in the closing laps, perhaps something more.
“There’s no doubt that going to Daytona, the way the pack racing works, I think the experience that I have there, if we can dodge the bullets and not be somebody that’s caught up in the carnage, we have a great shot of having a top-10 and an outside chance of winning,” he said.
No. 62 Beard Motorsports Team Roster
Primary Team Members
Driver: Casey Mears
Hometown: Bakersfield, California
Crew Chief: Darren Shaw
Hometown: Mooresville, North Carolina
Car Chief: Drew Mickey
Hometown: Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Spotter: Rick Carelli
Hometown: Arvada, Colorado
President: Linda Beard
Hometown: Mt. Pleasant, Michigan
Over-The-Wall Members
Front Tire Changer: Shiloh Windsor
Hometown: Ada, Oklahoma
Rear Tire Changer: Michael Russell
Hometown: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Tire Carrier: Lamar Neal
Hometown: Halifax, Virginia
Jack Man: De’Quan Hampton
Hometown: Los Angeles
Fuel Man: Douglas Warrick
Hometown: Hamilton, New Jersey
Road Crew Members
Mechanic: Jack Gagnon
Hometown: Quebec, Canada
Mechanic: Mark Sanders
Hometown: Springfield, Ohio
Tire Technician: Mike Harrold
Hometown: Mooresville, North Carolina
Engine Tuner: Brian Trevino
Hometown: Statesville, North Carolina
Interior Specialist: Nic Hill
Hometown: Fort Myers, Florida
Engineer: Mack Kanupp
Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina
Transporter Driver: Roger Lankford
Hometown: Lexington, North Carolina
