William Byron won Sunday’s (Feb. 16) Daytona 500, earning his second consecutive Daytona 500 victory after a huge crash on the backstretch took out race leader Denny Hamlin and a host of other cars.
Byron was ninth when the white flag flew in NASCAR Overtime, but avoided the last-lap melee on the outside lane and held off Tyler Reddick to earn the win.
The win was his 14th in the NASCAR Cup Series and his third at Daytona International Speedway. The season-opening win likely locks him into the playoffs for the seventh straight year.
“Obviously some good fortune, trusting my instinct on the final lap there,” Byron told Fox Sports’ Jamie Little. “I felt like they were getting squirrelly on the bottom. I was going to go (to the) third lane regardless because I was sixth coming down the backstretch. Obviously fortunate that it worked in our favor.”
Reddick, Jimmie Johnson, Chase Briscoe, John Hunter Nemechek, Alex Bowman, Ryan Blaney, Austin Cindric, Justin Allgaier and Chris Buescher completed the top 10.
Hamlin led at the white flag but was turned by contact with Cole Custer on the backstretch. The contact triggered The Big One with only Byron and Reddick initially escaping the backstretch clean.
“”I thought we were in a great spot many times in the last 10 laps,” Hamlin told Fox Sports’ Josh Sims. “I measured up the No. 2 (Cindric), got a run on him and stayed with him enough where I could control what side I wanted to pass him on. We had pulled away from the pack slightly, so I knew a run was going to come.
“I chose not the block them. In these (superspeedway) races, you have to live to make it off of turn 4, and we just didn’t.”
From there, Byron coasted to a surprising victory, becoming just the fifth driver in NASCAR history to win back-to-back Daytona 500s.
Like Byron, Reddick likely didn’t expect to be running top-two when the white flag flew. After the dust settled, however, Reddick’s No. 45 ended up with a runner-up finish in the season-opening race.
“That restart we had with 15 to go, we kinda got checked up and in the middle,” Reddick told Fox Sports’ Sims. “We were lined up 16th on the green-white-checkered. When they started to spin on the dogleg, I jumped out of line thinking that was going to be it.
“We just kept going. I knew that me and the No. 24 had a good run. When they started to spin on the inside I thought if I snaked through, and the No. 11 didn’t scrub my speed I would’ve had an opportunity to do something.”
The race completed around 10 p.m. ET after hours’ worth of weather delays. The first yellow flag of the afternoon flew for rain, with the red flag coming out shortly thereafter on lap 11. The total time of the delay was three hours, nine minutes, and 59 seconds.
The first caution for an incident came on lap 63 when Zane Smith got loose on the exit of turn 2 and slid up the track, collecting an innocent bystander in Josh Berry. The crash ended stage one under the yellow flag, with Logano collecting the stage win.
Logano quickly went from hero to zero on the ensuing restart, as a mechanical issue on the No. 22 caused an accordion wreck on the lap 71 restart. Many drivers in the top lane had nowhere to go, and the field scattered. Ross Chastain, Martin Truex Jr., Helio Castroneves, Chase Briscoe, Kyle Busch and Shane van Gisbergen were all involved, with Truex Jr., Castroneves and Chastain being knocked out of the race.
The biggest crash of the race to that point occurred with 15 laps to go. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. attempted to squeeze in front of Logano on the backstretch. Stenhouse was spun around, triggering a multi-car crash that involved Blaney, Logano, Busch, Todd Gilliland, Custer, Brad Keselowski and Noah Gragson.
On lap 196, Christopher Bell was turned by Custer on the backstretch. After hitting the wall, Bell went back down the track and caught Ryan Preece, who flipped at Daytona for the second time in his career. Both Bell and Preece walked away after the wreck.
Daytona 500 Results
The Cup Series will travel to Atlanta Motor Speedway on Feb. 23 for the Ambetter Health 400. The second Cup race of 2025 will be broadcast on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.