Motorsports’ Greatest Day Serves Up a Full Plate: Cody Ware Enjoys Breakfast With Monaco Grand Prix and Lunch With Indianapolis 500 Before Competing in Coca-Cola 600 – Speedway Digest

For the motorsports enthusiast, Sunday of Memorial Day weekend is the greatest day.

It begins at breakfast with Formula One on the streets of Monaco. Lunch is had while 33 drivers vie for the Borg-Warner Trophy in the Indianapolis 500. Dinner and dessert is then served at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway in the NASCAR Cup Series’ longest race – the Coca-Cola 600. Fans’ cups runneth over… and so too does the cup of Cody Ware.

The driver of the No. 51 Jacob Construction Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Rick Ware Racing (RWR) remains a fan of all motorsports even as he makes a living in NASCAR.

Just as fervent fans tune into ESPN at 9 a.m. EDT for this year’s Monaco Grand Prix, Ware will too. And after the checkered flag drops in the principality, Ware will turn the channel and his attention to FOX for its broadcast of the Indianapolis 500, where the green flag drops for the 109th running of The Greatest Spectacle in Racing at 12:45 p.m. Roughly three hours later when the Indy 500 is complete, Ware’s schedule diverges from that of the typical fan. After watching F1 and IndyCar’s elite, he joins NASCAR’s elite in the Coca-Cola 600.

“Right up until I’m getting ready to suit up, I’m watching the Indianapolis 500,” Ware said. “At Charlotte, they’ve got the Indy 500 up on the big screen there on the backstretch, and while you’re there in the garage area hanging out and meeting with guests, you’re watching the closing laps with them.

“It’s cool to be in the final race of the day, or the second half of the Indy/Charlotte double. There’s always an electric feel at the track. It’s basically the industry’s home track, so it’s very busy – a lot of people, a lot of guests, a lot of family. It’s a great way to finish off a great day of racing.”

Charlotte is where Ware got his start, specifically, in Legend Cars on the quarter-mile oval within the frontstretch of Charlotte’s main, 1.5-mile oval.

“My racing career and, really, my passion for racing started at Charlotte,” Ware said. “It was in ‘Winter Heat’ and ‘Summer Shootout’ in Legend Cars, racing in the semipro division.

“To have started racing at Charlotte in one of the smallest forms of racing, both literally and figuratively, to now racing at the pinnacle of stock car racing at Charlotte in the Coca Cola 600, is really cool. It’s something I always think about every time I drive through the tunnel and into the infield.”

Since those years in Legend Cars, Ware has competed in a variety of racing series. He raced Late Model stock cars and began his NASCAR career in earnest in late 2013, securing a handful of starts on the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour before racing across the NASCAR Mexico Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2014. On March 5, 2017, Ware made his Cup Series debut at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Outside of NASCAR, Ware made his mark in sportscar racing. He won the 2019-2020 LMP2 championship in the Asian Le Mans Series with co-driver Gustas Grinbergas. In a prelude to that title, Ware was the 2014 Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Rookie of the Year. More recently, Ware piloted a Ligier JS P320 to a podium finish in the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge LMP3 class at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway in January 2024. Ware has also competed in Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup and the NTT IndyCar Series.

“I’ve run three IndyCar races, tested the oval at Texas, and did ROP (Rookie Orientation Program) during the official test week in Indianapolis,” Ware said. “But the biggest thing is that I’m 6-foot-4. As much as I wanted to make it work, I learned Indy cars aren’t really suited for tall people. It’s why we focused on NASCAR.”

Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 will serve as Ware’s 119th career Cup Series start and his fourth in the Coca-Cola 600. The series’ longest race is one that Ware embraces.

“I’ll take a long race all day, every day,” Ware said. “Anytime your physical strength and your athleticism can come into play over those long, hot races, it’s an advantage for us.”

Ware wrestled in high school. The native of Greensboro, North Carolina, made the Ragsdale High varsity team as a freshman. The work ethic he built in his teen years continues today.

“Wrestling is what really got me started as an athlete. Being really tall, I needed to develop my core strength and overall fitness. I had a larger stature and I needed to make the most of it,” Ware said.

“There’s a lot of strength and endurance needed for driving a racecar. It’s about being on your game from start to finish, where you’re as good on lap 400 as you were on lap one.”

This is especially true at Charlotte, where the 400-lap race around the 1.5-mile oval begins at 6 p.m. in the heat of the day and ends well after 10 p.m. in the relative cool of night.

“The Coke 600 is always blazing hot to start, and while it does get a little cooler as the sun goes down, it’s still a test of your car, your body, and your mind,” Ware said.  

“The biggest thing is just keeping up with the track because it’s going to change a lot. You might have a great car on Saturday in practice and in qualifying, and you might even have a great car when you fire off on Sunday, but what your balance needs to be in the heat, in the daylight, with the sun beating down on the racetrack, versus when the lights come on and the sun goes down, and those track temps start going down, the grip starts going up and the lap times get faster. You have to be on. You have to be one step ahead on your adjustments. You want to be proactive versus reactive in how you work on your car and work on yourself in regard to the lines you want to run.

“Charlotte’s still a very tricky mile-and-a-half track. It has a very nasty bump over in turns three and four. The track has seen a lot of wear over the years. It’s definitely a driver’s track. If you make a mistake, you’re probably ending up in the wall. So it’s 600 miles of perfection.”

The perfect way to cap a perfect day of racing.

Prime Video will broadcast the 66th running of the Coca-Cola 600 beginning with a pre-race show at 5 p.m. EDT. The race goes green at 6 p.m. with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio complementing the live telecast.

RWR PR