Article by Dalton Hopkins, Frontstretch
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — It may have been Valentine’s Day, but NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series racer Anthony Alfredo of Ridgefield, CT spent parts of Saturday afternoon picking of the pieces of his broken heart in the infield of Daytona International Speedway. It was arguably the lowest emotional point of his racing career.
But later that night, Alfredo stood next to a No. 4 Alpha Prime Racing Chevrolet, 11th after the 120-lap O’Reilly Series race, smiling and doing sponsorship videos like it was all supposed to work out this way.
The car wasn’t his full-time ride for 2026. In fact, Alfredo had just endured what may have been the most emotionally draining four days of his life. But he capped it with a respectable run and a near-top-10 finish in the NORS season opener.
“Hell’s a pretty awful place, so I’m not going to go that far, but it felt close to it,” Alfredo said post-race to Frontstretch. “I know there’s way crazier things that happen in life that are way more important than racing, but I’m not going to lie, in the moment, I was at a pretty low place.
“For me tonight to go out there and have a good run, and more importantly, to stay competitive, especially with this chase format now, was critical, and we certainly made the most of it.”
Alfredo’s woes began on Wednesday (Feb. 11) when he made his Daytona 500 qualifying run in the No. 62 Beard Motorsports Chevrolet. The 27-year-old needed to outqualify at least six other open cars entered in the race. Unfortunately for the family-owned team, they failed to make it in on time. As a result, Alfredo had to race his way in through the Duel races the following day – something he desperately wanted to avoid.
“The Duels are just so stressful,” Alfredo said on Daytona 500 Media Day. “Despite how fast your car is, there’s so many unforeseen circumstances. … It’s so difficult, and I don’t want to be in that position.”
But race in the Duels he did, enduring the pressure to initially come out on top.
Alfredo had to defeat racing veterans BJ McLeod and JJ Yeley to secure his position in this year’s Great American Race. After the final pit stop, he found himself at the end of the lead pack riding near 18th.
That was just fine, because both Yeley and McLeod had lost the draft half a lap behind him. Alfredo crossed the line with plenty of space to spare and raced his way into the Daytona 500.
For about two hours, that is.
That night, Alfredo was recording videos on social media in his hauler when he started receiving comments on his posts informing him that he had been disqualified. The worst-case scenario had occurred, and Alfredo’s No. 62 Chevrolet had indeed failed inspection.
Just like that, he was out of the Daytona 500.
Visibly distraught after receiving the news, Alfredo still tried to push ahead.
“I’m just going to get focused on my No. 96 Dude Wipes Chevrolet,” he said, “tomorrow in practice with Viking Motorsports and go win that race Saturday.”
But things went from bad to worse by Saturday afternoon. Running for that new team, Alfredo failed to qualify his No. 96 Chevrolet into the O’Reilly race.
“I got refocused this morning, and then it was just another kick in the in the groin there after qualifying,” he explained. “We had a mechanical issue with our car.”
Despondent, Alfredo could do nothing but pray for things to get better. That’s when he got word that his sponsor, Dude Wipes, had bought the No. 4 Alpha Prime Racing entry for him to race.
“All of a sudden, they come in the hauler and say, ‘Caesar [Bacarella] and Tommy [Joe Martins] are going to let me drive their car,” he said, “and even more importantly, get our partners on it.’ … It means a lot that they allowed me to do that.
“That’s what racing’s all about, right? It’s a community, it’s a family.”
It wasn’t his own car, but Alfredo was at least going to race during Speedweeks.
Or so he thought. When the green flag waved ahead of him to take the start, chaos ensued. And Alfredo, of course, got caught up in it.
“I only had one car behind me at the start of the race, and I laid off 10 car lengths, and they wrecked, and I was just creeping,” Alfredo recalled. “I don’t think I had upshifted yet, and I got plowed from behind, and got a little bit of damage.
“It didn’t even surprise me, to be honest. I wasn’t like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I was more like, ‘Yeah, I figured something like that was going to happen to me at this point,’ Thankfully, the car wasn’t beat.”
And so, the team fixed the car. And Alfredo fought.
He underwent the majority of the night riding in the back with a damaged race car trying to finish the one race he had managed to enter and survive. Luckily for him, the attrition rate grew, and the Connecticut native went higher in the running order as a number of drivers crashed around him.
By the time the race reached its final restart, he climbed all the way up to 11th, and that’s where he stayed, avoiding all of the carnage and living to fight on the next week.
“You can love it, and it doesn’t love you back,” Alfredo said of NASCAR. “That’s part of it, and I feel like it’s hated me way more than it’s liked me, but I think that’s just part of the test of my resilience, right?
“I’m never going to give up. I want this so bad and until these opportunities don’t continue to come together, I’m never going to give up.”