NASCAR fans, the wait is over. The checkered-flag flew over Daytona International Speedway, and we have a winner of The Great American Race.
Before the race, we had a presidential visit. Like he did in 2020, President Donald Trump arrived at the speedway, and took laps with his presidential motorcade during the pace laps prior to the green flag.
During the race, there were two rain delays. On lap 11, the field was brought down pit road and halted for nearly three and a half hours because of torrential downpour. The race restarted for ten laps under caution, and rain fell again. After that delay ended, we got racing.
Defending Cup Series champion Joey Logano won Stage 1, and Brad Keselowski was runner-up. The Ford cars were fast all night, and Austin Cindric led the most laps, with 59 laps led. Stage 2 was won by Ryan Blamey, with fellow Penske teammate Austin Cindric in the runner-up position. The final stage is where the action really happened.
On lap 187, “The Big One” happened. “The Big One” is the name given to a wreck that wrecks more than 8 cars at a super-speedway, and it always happens. The newest driver added to RFK Racing, Ryan Preece, went for a wild ride. His car hit the door of Christopher Bell’s Toyota, and Preece’s #60 Buildsubmarines.com Ford went airborne. It did a wheelie, and when it rotated to the left, air caught under the car pushed up, causing him to flip on his roof, and tumble onto the 33-degree banking in Turn 3, before hitting the top of the SAFER barrier, and landing on his wheels on the apron. This flip was reminiscent of his prior flip in 2023 at Daytona, in the same spot, however this crash was lighter than his hellacious hit in 2023.
The race finished in an overtime restart. On the final lap, Denny Hamlin was spun out by Cole Custer, and this caused a chain-reaction crash that wrecked the top 8 cars, with William Byron, Tyler Reddick, and Jimmie Johnson making it through the carnage. Reddick couldn’t catch Byron, and thus William Byron won back-to-back Daytona 500 races. Byron is the first driver to win back-to-back Daytona 500’s since Denny Hamlin in 2019 and 2020.
This was Jimmie Johnson’s first podium finish since the 2020 Dydrene 311 at Dover, where he finished third. Johnson has had a tough return to part-time racing, but this was a diamond in the rough kind of race for him. The team he owns and races for, LEGACY Motor Club, got two cars in the top five for the first time ever, with the driver of the Dollar Tree #42 Toyota, John Hunter Nemechek, finishing in fifth place.
After his harrowing crash, Ryan Preece explained his side in an interview with FOX Sports. Preece said “I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what makes these cars like a sheet of plywood when you walk out on a windy day, but when the car took off like that and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter. I’m lucky to walk away but we’re getting really close to somebody not being able to. It’s frustrating when you end your day like this.”
This year’s Daytona 500 was one of the craziest we’ve ever seen. A presidential visit, two rain delays, an appearance from internet-star The Rizzler, a car doing a backflip, and so much more. Next week’s race is the Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, on Sunday, Feb. 23 at 3:00 PM EST on FOX.
