Stat Sheet: Will We Ever See a Clean Daytona 500 Finish?

Wreck. Another wreck. Flip. Overtime. Last-lap wreck. Winner fortunate enough to avoid said wrecks.

If it sounds all too familiar, it is. Year after year, the Daytona 500 ends in this stale, cookie-cutter fashion that makes a mockery out of NASCAR’s most prestigious race. Can anyone say with a straight face that these are the greatest stock car drivers in the world when the Daytona 500 — and superspeedway races in general — consistently turn into demolition derbies the final 20 laps?

For the sake of the teams, they’d appreciate not having to spend the six- or seven-figure price tag on repairs that typically come with every February trip to Florida’s Atlantic coast. For the sake of the drivers, they’d appreciate a race (and a superspeedway package) that allows individual talent to shine through. And for the sake of the fans, they’d appreciate an event that isn’t decided by which drivers successfully or unsuccessfully navigate the end-of-race minefields.

It shouldn’t feel like a tall order, but the Daytona 500 continues to stray further and further away from that ideal with each passing year. Late-race wrecks have become so commonplace in the 500 that one would struggle to remember the last time there wasn’t one.

You’d have to go all the way back to 2019 to find a Daytona 500 where there wasn’t a crash on the final lap, and yet that was the same race where Chase Elliott managed to record a 17th-place finish from the garage. So even if it didn’t occur on the last lap, the field had no trouble with smashing up sheet metal that year.

So, when was the last time the Daytona 500 had a true “clean” finish? For this exercise, a “clean” Daytona 500 finish must meet the following three criteria:

• The race must finish at lap 200. No overtimes allowed.
• The race must finish under green-flag conditions.
• The race cannot feature a crash on the final lap.

For example, Sunday’s (Feb. 16) 500 only met one of the three. It did feature a finish under green, but the race was extended to 201 laps and featured a Big One on the backstretch with two turns to go.

The 2005 Daytona 500 was the first since the implementation of overtime, so we have more than two decades worth of data to see how often the 500 has finished without a hitch.

So, of the last 21 races, how many of them featured a “clean” finish, meeting all three criteria?

Three.

Yes, you read that right. Three. Of the last 21 Daytona 500s, only three have ended under green on lap 200 without a last-lap crash: 2008, 2016 and 2017.

It has been eight years since a Daytona 500 wasn’t decided by late-race wrecks. Just 14% of Daytona 500 finishes in the last 20 years have been decided by pure racing.

That is a serious, serious problem. Having that many endings decided by crashes dilutes the prestige and significance of winning the race. Wrecks are unavoidable, sure, but 86% of Daytona 500 finishes should not turn into an episode of Survivor.

The Daytona 500 of 2025 is completely unrecognizable from the Daytona 500 of 1995. But time marches on, and for better or worse, things change.

But is this the change we truly want to see?

Stephen Stumpf

Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.

Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.