Milford Roots To NASCAR Announcing - Mike Bagley Awaits The 2021 Season

Speedweeks at the

will look a little different compared to previous years.  Qualifying to determine the front row for the Daytona 500 is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 10. Traditionally, that event is held the Sunday before the "Great American Race." Also a staple of the Sunday prior was the Busch Clash. The exhibition race is moves up in the week and will take place Tuesday Feb. 9. Providing play-by-play on the

is Milford, DE native

Bagley has been with MRN since 1992. His love of racing began at an early age at the dirt tracks on Delmarva. " Mom and Dad used to take me to U.S. 13 (

as a child and as Dad says in Mom's arms started watching dirt track racing," Bagley recalls.  To get back on the track in 2020 following the national pause in the early days of the pandemic,

made efforts to limit the number of people at the tracks. Practice and qualifying were all but done away with. While several teams overcame that challenge, the 2019 Cup Champion struggled to deal with lack of time on the track. "I think

and that team depend on practice and qualifying to validate what they are learning through the simulator back at the shops and the decisions they make set up wise," Bagley said. "There was an impact. Anytime you can get on the track, that's beneficial to the teams so they know what to expect on Sunday or Saturday night."  Some of the biggest changes in the sport in 2021 is the schedule. Changes that impact the

. It was last year the Monster Mile announced it will give one of its two NASCAR Cup race dates to its sister track in Nashville. Kentucky and Chicagoland are two tracks that lost Cup races in 2021. Despite some volatility, Bagley believes Dover will not suffer the same fate. "Dover International Speedway has played a very important part in the growth of NASCAR and the maintaining of its fan base," Bagley told WRDE. "Dover provides NASCAR with its first run into the northeast. We start the season in Florida. We then go out west.  We then come back and stay in the south, but when NASCAR makes its move up the coast and goes into the northeast for the first time Dover is that first stop."    NASCAR returns to Dover the weekend of May 14. Click

for the full NASCAR 2021 Cup Schedule. Bagley did provide two predictions;

to win the Daytona 500 and

to win the Cup Championship.