DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — With their playoff hopes on the line, just about everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong for Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman in Saturday’s (Aug. 23) Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway.
The two drivers were clinging on to the last two NASCAR Cup Series playoff spots on points, and if race ended with a new 2025 winner — as often is the case at superspeedways — Reddick and Bowman would be fighting each other for the 16th and final spot to get in.
Disaster struck early for Reddick, as he spun out of turn 4 and nosed his No. 45 car into the inside wall on lap 18 after contact with Todd Gilliland.
“I just screwed up, honestly,” Reddick explained. “[Was] trying to get to the middle lane and the hole wasn’t there and I just made a mistake.”
“I was very disappointed in myself for sure,” Reddick continued. “For a minute there, I didn’t know what was going to happen and how [the car] was going to look, so they just kept working on it. …
“Early on, I couldn’t even run in the draft, so they had a plan. They worked on it, kept making it better.”
What could’ve been a disaster for Reddick was quickly remedied by the crew, as it made the necessary repairs to the No. 45 car and kept it on the lead lap. The team’s anxieties didn’t last long anyway, as Bowman was collected in a 12-car crash on lap 27 and knocked out of the race with terminal damage.
Bowman’s misfortune allowed Reddick to clinch a playoff spot, and the No. 45 team’s rollercoaster of emotions lasted just 10 laps.
“Unfortunately for the No. 48, the crash and carnage that happened right after our incident is what pretty much saved us,” Reddick said. “Obviously, we didn’t get a new winner, but it’s tough to be in the spot, nonetheless. Made the night really hard for us.”
Bowman started the race on the front row, but he had faded to the middle of the pack by the halfway point of stage one. That put him smack-dab in the middle of the carnage when it broke out.
“We were 10th or backside of the top 10 — somewhere around there — when we crashed, and when they crashed in front of us, there wasn’t anything we could have done different to get through that,” Bowman said.
Bowman’s championship hopes were out of his hands; all he could do was agonizingly watch the race from the infield and hope for the best. If the race ended with a repeat winner, he’d take the final playoff spot on points. If someone new took the checkered flag, he’d be the first one out in heart-breaking fashion.
“We’ll have to wait and see what happens, right?” Bowman said. “It’s very outside of our control, just like crashing was outside of our control. So, welcome to speedway racing. And I wish we weren’t in this position, but we are, so it’s all we can do.”
As the laps ticked down, Bowman’s playoff chances were on life support. The top 10 with five laps to go was filled with cars that would knock him out of the playoffs, and it appeared that no 2025 winners were in position to save the day.
But the racing reached insanity in the last 10 miles, and it was Ryan Blaney, a winner at Nashville Superspeedway in June, who came to save Bowman’s season by roaring out of turn 4 to take the checkered flag in a four-wide photo finish over Daniel Suarez, Justin Haley and Cole Custer.
Thirty-one one-thousandths of a second was the difference between Bowman making and missing the playoffs.
“Happy to see (Blaney) win, he’s had a ton of huge hits here,” Bowman told FOX Sports. “I don’t know what to say other than that. Just thankful that he won.”
“The situation that we’re coming in here with, it’s tough,” Bowman continued. “We crash in something’s that outside of our control, and then you just have to sit and watch. Not fun for any of these guys. They all work really hard, and they deserve to be in it, and I’m glad that we’re in it.”
The regular season finale went all the way down to the wire in a nail-biting finish, and after 26 races, six months of grueling work and six months of cross-country travel, the 2025 Cup Series playoff grid is finally set.
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.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf