"It's just really good. It's just so important. There's a lot of guys and gals on my team that have never won a race before. The company hasn't won a race in five, six years now, five and a half, something like that. That's any kind of race.

"It's really important to get that winning habit built up, and the only way you can really do that is to go win. That builds confidence in each other and builds expectations. Not just the expectations, that's probably not the right word, it builds a reality that those expectations can happen. We had a really poor showing at the Clash, and we needed something to offset that, and this is a great offset for that." - Brad Keselowski, Duel No. 1 winner

"What a way to start Speedweeks out here, right, to put both RFK Ford Mustangs in victory lane, give Fastenal their first win on a Cup car. It's not the big show, but we've got a really good hotrod here.

"I think we were racing there -- I think Brad talked about it, we got to race because he kept his clean and won, so we got to go out there and race it, and I know everybody was trying to do the same and trying to throw a block there at the end. I don't want to get into him, just trying to pull down and get in front of the 15 there. I don't want it to happen that way for sure, but I am really proud of the effort, proud of a nice good execution all the way down pit road, and we're in a good spot here. That's exciting." - Chris Buescher, Duel No. 2 winner

"I just made a mistake.  I didn't think the run would come that quick, but it just happened.  I knew a run was going to happen at some point on the last lap.  I thought it was early; it wouldn't have happened there.  

I thought I was still clear, but I wasn't.  I apologize to my race team.  I wrecked their car and tore up [Harrison Burton] as well.  It was a dumb move and we were in position to, at worst, finish fourth and blew it." - Joey Logano, finished ninth in Duel No. 2 (Crashed out)

"It feels really good. I'll tell you, I have not slept much in the last couple days just trying to keep a cool composure. I've been nervous about this race because there's so many things that can happen and so many ways it can go. We've talked the scenarios all the way, and I watched the first race and I saw the 62 car was in the lead of the cars, and I thought, well, if he finishes in front of those guys and the 50 actually runs in the second race, we'll be in on time.

"Just figuring all those scenarios. But the car drove really, really good. We ran up in the top 10 there, 12th or whatever, ended up finishing 14th. We had a little bit of a hiccup trying to put fuel in on pit road and lost the draft, so we were able to kind of work our way back in there.

"Maybe that was good for us because we missed that wreck towards the end, so we might have been in the middle of that." - Greg Biffle, finished 14th in Duel No. 2, raced into the Daytona 500

"It's a relief, I can tell you that. I thought for a while there that we weren't going to make it and squeaked by just on the last lap. I made a mistake early, sped on pit road, shouldn't have had that happen. Barely came back.

"We were running some fast lap times in that line towards the end, and I knew we were going to be close. I thought we might have a chance at catching him and the timing was just right. Right on the last lap we got to him, got by him and that's what we needed to do to make the 500.

"This is huge for The Money Team Racing, huge for Floyd, for Pit Viper. This mattered a lot to us. There really was no option but to make this race. We squeaked in by the skin of our teeth, got the hiccups out of the way and hopefully have a smooth Sunday." - Kaz Grala, finished 18th in Duel No. 1, raced into the Daytona 500

Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.  Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.

Thursday night brought the NASCAR Cup Series teams to Daytona for two 150-mile races that would set the grid for Sunday's Daytona 500.  These were very different races, as often happens.  Regardless, they should give viewers a decent idea of what to expect on Sunday.

If that is so, the NASCAR Cup Series' current rule package with the NextGen car at Daytona and Talladega appears to race as a much slower version of a late 1990s plate racer, but with the drop-off out of the draft from the Gen6.  You're screwed if you make a bad move.  I do fear that this knowledge will make the Daytona 500 rather lackluster to watch.

On Thursday night's broadcast, FOX Sports 1 had Larry McReynolds join Mike Joy and Clint Bowyer in the broadcast booth.  I thought that this was a nice trio.  While McReynolds has done well over the past couple of years with the stuff he's had at his disposal in Charlotte, he needs to be at the track so that he can talk to crewmembers, see these NextGen cars and learn as much as he possibly can about them.  You can't just show up at the shop like Ned Jarrett could back in the early 1990s when he was hosting Inside Winston Cup Racing on TNN.  Heck, the teams often let them tape shows in their shops.  The days of that are long over, although they could come back.

I felt that the booth was truly balanced with McReynolds there.  Honestly, this is probably the best booth setup that FOX could have for their NASCAR Cup Series coverage this year and likely the most cost-effective permanent booth that they could come up with.

Speaking of booth pairings, during Duel No. 2, Mike Joy announced that Matt Kenseth will be in the broadcast booth for next Sunday's WISE Power 400 at Auto Club Speedway.  That strikes me as a somewhat odd choice, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he can do.  I just hope that FOX isn't going to try to piecemeal their booth effort for the entire season like this.  They needed to have some kind of analyst schedule for all three of NASCAR's National-level series yesterday, if not earlier.

The broadcast itself was decent at times, but really lacking in others.  The most notable example of this was when Kaz Grala was able to run down JJ Yeley and take the lead on the final lap last night in Duel No. 1.  When I was watching, I was noticing that Yeley (and BJ McLeod) were roughly 15 seconds ahead of Grala with eight laps to go.  I also knew from the peeks back into the second pack that Grala was running with them.

The broadcast never really made any notion about whether Grala could catch Yeley.  Meanwhile, the whole final five laps of that race, I was thinking that it could be possible.  It just tells you how far off the pace the MBM Motorsports Fords were Thursday night.  Yeley ended up two laps down despite having minimal issues.

With a couple of laps to go, the leaders lapped Yeley and McLeod.  Grala was in the second pack, five seconds behind and running just as fast as the leaders.  As a result, Grala ran Yeley down and took the position in turn 2 on the final lap.  You didn't see this in real time as the broadcast was focused on the leaders.

There were some fans upset with the directing afterwards.  Mike Joy took to Twitter after the race with this explanation.

I do understand what Joy is saying here.  There was a legitimate race for the win between Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric.  I feel like a split-screen should have been employed in this situation.  However, the broadcast gave the feeling that it was already settled.  That's why they didn't.  Joy's statement that FOX's cameras covered it fully is true.  I saw those replays at the same time everyone else did.  The issue is that viewers shouldn't have had to see it for the first time via replay.

Action-wise, Thursday night had only some action.  I think with more cars, the Daytona 500 will be more enjoyable to watch.  Duel No. 2 saw more action and FOX was well-equipped to bring viewers that action.  Based on what I saw Thursday night, they may need to look a little more into how the NextGen car drafts for the Daytona 500 broadcast because there is literally no room for error now.

Viewers got a couple post-race interviews after each Duel.  There was a little more after Duel No. 2 mostly due to the fact that there was more action in Duel No. 2.

Prior to the racing, NASCAR RaceDay aired a sit-down piece that Jamie Little did with NASCAR president Steve Phelps at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.  I think that FOX Sports 1 pitched this to be a little more than it was.  Phelps believes that the new NextGen car has created a lot of positive momentum for the sport with the new ownership blood coming in and the added excitement.  That's great.  The team owners in Cup are getting up there in age.  A lot of them are in their 70s.  However, there have been a lot of issues tied to the rollout of the car that weren't addressed here.  Many of the NextGen vendors are overtaxed, most notably Five-Star Bodies.  The issues there will affect racing all over the country in and out of NASCAR.

Granted, there really wasn't enough time to go into those issues, but I would be lying to you if I didn't say that I was really concerned.  The entire first half of the season is going to be worrisome until the part shortages go away.  For all I know, that will be the entire season until NASCAR relents and allows teams to manufacture certain things to ease up the burden on overtaxed vendors.

Overall, there are some positives to take out of FOX Sports 1's broadcast of Thursday night's Bluegreen Vacations Duels.  Having McReynolds in the broadcast booth works for me.  He's essentially middle ground as compared to Joy and Bowyer.  I never agreed with McReynolds getting moved out of the booth for Jeff Gordon in the first place.  Let's face it, when FOX Sports hired Gordon, he was supposed to be Darrell Waltrip's replacement, but Waltrip didn't leave at that time.  He chose to stay on through the end of FOX's 2019 season.  Something had to give and that person was McReynolds.

Apparently, there are going to be 11 teams with in-car cameras Sunday, four cameras each.  That's an expansive effort.  You probably won't be able to see all four in-car angles at the same time (I don't recall BSI being able to do more than two at once), but it should be quite interesting.  As long as they don't rely too much on bumper cams, things should be fine.  Given how close everyone is at Daytona, it's hard to see anything at times from those shots.

FOX does need to improve their directing choices and how they approach certain aspects of the race.  Once someone gets a lap down, it can be a little difficult to determine how close lapped cars are to each other as far as position is concerned.  Unlike IMSA, NASCAR timing and scoring doesn't show intervals between cars if they're off the lead lap.

They needed to keep a closer eye on the Yeley-Grala situation so that they didn't end up surprised that Grala was able to get past Yeley.  They could have covered that pass live via split-screen, like SPEED did in 2008 when John Andretti raced into the Daytona 500.

Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.  Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.