Despite late spin, rookie Jon Garrett happy with his debut at Daytona

The final lap at Daytona International Speedway can be a hairy experience, even for drivers with thousands of laps under their belts.

Just ask Aric Almirola, who was less than a mile from victory in the 2018 Daytona 500 when a nudge from behind sent him headlong into the outside wall rather than Victory Lane. It can be considerably more nerve-wracking for a rookie.

That’s exactly how it was for Jon Garrett, a 53-year-old rookie from Athens, Texas, last week in the ARCA Menards Series season-opener at Daytona.

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For most of the afternoon, Garrett didn’t feel the nerves associated with racing at the World Center of Racing for the first time.

“It was actually a pretty calm day,” he said. “It was surreal. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe you’re actually doing this.’ We moved up through the field and stayed out of everyone else’s problems. I listened to Andy Hillenburg on the radio and did what he said. Everything he told me would happen happened exactly like he said it would.”

The field took the green flag for the final time with just three laps remaining. Many, Garrett, included, thought it would lead to a big crash.

“When we got the green flag, I knew the chances were high we were going to have a big wreck,” he said. “We were all bunched up, 20 cars, two- and three-wide. I was in the middle of it all, right where I had been all day.

“I saw the 6 (driven by Jack Wood) go to the top, and in hindsight, I should have gone with him. I think we would have had a pretty good run on the top and we’d have just blown right on by all of them. I just didn’t have the confidence to pull that off right then.”

The field made it cleanly through the first two laps of the final three-lap green flag run and took the white flag. As they came across the start/finish line to begin the final lap, the intensity level ratcheted up.

“I was stuck in the middle and the air was buffeting me all over the place,” he said. “It’s a miracle we all didn’t wreck. But just as thought we were about to all make it, I got turned sideways.

“It happened so quickly there was nothing I could even do to react to it. The scary thing is it got quiet. I’ve been upside down in race cars lots of times, and I knew every time I did it got really quiet as it was happening, so I was getting myself ready to get upside down.

“Then I heard Andy on the radio telling me how to drive out of it, and I knew I needed to get back to the start/finish line.”

Garrett was frustrated not to get the finish he was on track to get, but he checked every other box he wanted to check throughout the weekend.

“We didn’t get the finish we deserved, but we did everything else we wanted to do,” he said. “We ran all the laps, we made some friends on the race track and earned some respect from our fellow competitors.

“It would have been great to get that top-10 finish we should have gotten, but it was still a great day for us and the team.”