The intensity was high early on in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway, with three cautions and one red flag total in stage one.
That red flag period was after the Big One caught up multiple playoff hopefuls.
Bubba Wallace was in the middle lane of the field, but Kyle Busch and Joey Logano directly beneath him made him three-wide in his row. Kyle Larson was behind Wallace and gave him a slight bump in turn 4.
The onboard appeared to show Wallace fight the wheel just before he made contact with Logano and turned around in front of the pack, sparking off a multi-car crash.
Among those involved were Wallace, Logano, and Austin Cindric, who were all locked into the playoffs with wins. Also caught up were playoff hopefuls Busch and Alex Bowman, among many others.
“Everything was happening pretty quick there,” Wallace told NBC Sports. “The hit from the 5 (Kyle Larson) shoved me down there and it was like I got shoved up by the 22 (Joey Logano) and the 12 (Ryan Blaney) moved up. He was trying to just move up and take the lane. But, oh well. I hate it. 20th or 22nd to the lead in a short amount of time. …
“I’ll take the blame for it, unfortunately. Just a crap deal. Everything was going too good too early to be all true, so something was bound to happen. I hate that for everyone involved in it but hopefully we can get the 45 (Tyler Reddick) in. All in all, we’re locked in, and we’ll get focused for Darlington.”
“I saw a lot of cars wrecking and I hit one of them after I thought we got through the wreck,” Cindric said. “I tried to make the third lane work, maybe a little too early, I lost some track position and felt like the intensity was picking up super early in the race there and I got collected and now I’m talking to you.”
Bowman’s damage was too irreparable, and he’s out of the race, waiting and watching to see if he’ll get in on points or if a new winner will make their way in.
“Being in front of it is really about all I could do, unfortunately,” Bowman said. “From where we were, there just really wasn’t any way to get around it. All of the hits just sort of compounded too much to be able to fix it.
“I hate it for the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet team. We’ve done a lot of good things lately. Tonight is going to be stressful to watch, but we’ll see what happens. Hope for no new winners, but if somebody wins, they deserve it. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t won yet this year. We’ve been so strong, especially lately. I would say from Michigan on, it’s been something fun to be a part of.
“It was all very out of our control. I hate that we tanked so bad the first run. The bottom lane just fell apart behind us. We had to overcome that, but we had gotten back to the back side of the top-10. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.”
Prior to this accident, there were two cautions for Casey Mears spinning and hitting the wall after cutting a tire, as well as a Tyler Reddick and Todd Gilliland wreck. Reddick suffered some nose damage after he hit the inside wall in the incident.
With Bowman out of the race, Reddick’s playoff position was secured on points, leaving one more up for grabs.
Joy joined Frontstretch in 2019 as a NASCAR DraftKings writer, expanding to news and iRacing coverage in 2020. She's currently an assistant editor and involved with photos, social media and news editing. A California native, Joy was raised watching motorsports and started watching NASCAR extensively in 2001. She earned her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Bakersfield in 2010.