DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Nate Bargatze thought-about squeezing a giant, dumb joke into his command for drivers to start out their engines on the Daytona 500.

“At first, I considered doing like, what number of ft are in 500 miles,” Bargatze stated. “No one is aware of.”

Bargatze laughed when he stated the proposed joke, which is a riff on his well-liked “Washington’s Dream” sketches on “Saturday Night time Stay,” fell flat when he examined it Saturday evening throughout a gig in Indianapolis.

“I used to be going to do one other one with Jimmie Johnson being older to let the youthful drivers know that his left blinker will likely be on the entire race,” Bargatze stated. “Then once I acquired right here and talked about it, it’s like, I believe you simply have to do, regular? You might have all these hopes and desires to do one thing humorous.”

Bargatze stored it straight in his position as grand marshal for Sunday’s Daytona 500.

“It is going to be madness,” Bargatze stated. “It has been a dream to be requested to do that.”

Bargatze’s day at Daytona — the place he mingled with drivers corresponding to Denny Hamlin — is simply the newest dream job for probably the most well-liked stand-ups at present working. He hosted the Emmy Awards, launched three Netflix specials and simply received a Finest Comedy Album Grammy Award for “Your Pal, Nate Bargatze.”

His “Huge Dumb Eyes World Tour” set a report for largest one-year gross by a comedy performer in historical past and has set greater than 40 enviornment attendance information.

They served as warm-up acts for his first starring position in a film, “The Breadwinner.” Bargatze co-wrote the script for the movie he stated was influenced by his stand-up and old-school humorous, household motion pictures corresponding to “Mr. Mother” and “House Alone.”

“You need it to be broad, the entire household can come,” Bargatze stated. “It is like what I do with stand-up, you type of simply need everyone to return.”

Mandy Moore performs Bargatze’s spouse within the comedy, which additionally consists of Colin Jost and Will Forte and opens Could 29.

“Clearly overwhelming,” Bargatze stated. “I don’t know learn how to act. Studying that on the fly was a very good time.”

The 46-year-old Bargatze resumes his stand-up tour this week in Rockford, Illinois, and he is set to host the ABC recreation present, “The Biggest Common American.”

The title appeared becoming when Bargatze was gifted certainly one of solely 500 specialty Daytona 500 hats. The hat was numbered 302. Common.

“It isn’t bragging,” Bargatze stated. “I am proper within the center. That is the place the typical American can be. It is humility. It is the way you go.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing