What Happened?
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Tyler Reddick made a pass for the lead on the last corner of the last lap at Daytona International Speedway to take the lead and win his first Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 15. Behind him slid a melee of cars crashing across the line. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Joey Logano, Chase Elliott and Brad Keselowski all tumbled behind Reddick to wrap up the top five.
Reddick led only the final lap to win what was 23XI Racing’s first Daytona 500. The victory also snapped a 38-race winless streak for Reddick, who went winless in 2025.
What Really Happened?
I get it, you hate the fuel saving teams do with the Next Gen on superspeedways. To be transparent, I’m not a fan of it either.
But what if I told you that it may have actually been the reason we saw a finish to the Daytona 500 this year?
For the entire week, everyone kept talking about the weekend forecast in the media center leading up to Sunday. As days went on, we all sort of hoped the forecast would change, but it never did. But on Saturday morning, NASCAR made the critical decision to start the 500-mile race an hour earlier than its scheduled start time.
Hallelujah.
Popular decisions notwithstanding, asking NASCAR Cup Series drivers to finish a Daytona 500 within the roughly four-hour window they had before storms were supposed to arrive in Daytona was a tall order. Except for 2024, there had been more than five cautions in each Daytona 500 since 2004 and plenty of red flags that have been used to stall the event into the later parts of the night.
However, by the time the field had reached the halfway point, roughly an hour and 40 minutes had passed. The race, for the time being, was on track to finish before the rain came.
All the field had to do was not mess it up by crashing more.
From then on, that was proving to be a tall order. The end of stage two culminated with a 17-car pileup that saw the end of multiple teams’ days. By lap 120, it was not looking good on finishing the Great American Race before the weather was to arrive. To make matters worse, when the final stage began, the field began to return to its three-wide fuel-saving position at roughly 40% throttle. The fans groaned.
But that’s when I noticed that laps were ticking away.
Lap by lap, little by little, the field was finishing the Daytona 500 and winning its own race against Mother Nature. By the time drivers started to reach pit road, there were less than 20 laps to go.
Was it boring? Sure, but I would rather have a Daytona 500 be dull for 50 laps and finish under green in a thrilling race to the line than a race finish red flagged because of rain.
Not to mention, that finish certainly made most fans forget about saving fuel and running five-second slower lap times for a while.
In fact, I forgot about it, too. It wasn’t until I returned to the media center after grabbing interviews and photos on pit road and in the Cup garage that I felt the rain drops start to fall.
I was thankful I was feeling them after 200 full laps of Daytona 500 racing, and not anything shorter.
Paint Scheme of the Race
There was no shortage of homages being made to the late Greg Biffle this year in any series at Daytona.
Whether it came from the ARCA Menards Series, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, or in Cup, you saw stickers of the iconic No. 16 everywhere you went, no matter what garage.
That included the No. 16 of AJ Allmendinger‘s Kaulig Racing Chevrolet.
It’s important to note RFK Racing also paid homage to Biffle by changing the font of their numbers to the same style as well. However, Kaulig Racing really didn’t have much affiliation with the former champion, so they didn’t need to do anything.
But they did, and it looked great to see that No. 16 on the high banks of Daytona one more time.
What’s Next?
The Cup Series season is underway, but first, some more draft racing.
The field will take on the 1.5-mile EchoPark Speedway in Georgia for the season’s second race. Coverage for the Autotrader 400 will begin live on FOX at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 22.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT
BJ McLeod has a broken car and causes the first wreck, no surprise.
I would have rather seen Alfredo in the race.
He did what he was in the event for.
This article is some major PR tail saving for nascar… it’s a race not a funeral procession. Not a good look at all.
Amen.
NA$CAR hasn’t had a real “race” since Brian decided to improve the new toy he inherited.
3 wide parade laps are not racing That was the most boring part of the race Cruise Control is for the interstate not the race track
i hate 3 wide racing at these tracks. it’s only a matter of time before someone messes up their concentration and causes problems. it’s also a given that usually by lap 20 or so the drivers come unglued and craziness breaks out. i was off this year by 10 laps.
i’ve often said that these “plate” track races should be sponsored by anti acids and headache cures.
onto Atlanta. right now chance of rain on friday and then cold front moving in for weekend so it won’t be 50 in the mornings or in the 70’s in the afternoon. those coming to the track, bring winter and summer clothes.
Tow truck companies and body repair shops would be great sponsors at plate tracks too!
Atlanta will be Daytona 2.0. Three Toys or three Mr. H cars leading three rows and controlling the speed. Yay! NA$CAR should pay the fans who show up to watch the entertainment product.
The fastest lap was lap 108 by #77 at 45.584 sec. at 197.438 mph. That is a long way from under 170. The “racers” should be ashamed of themselves.
yes it will be.it will be interesting to see how many people are in the stands.
love it #77 was fastest…guess he didn’t get the email about just riding around.
Maybe he wanted to actually “race”?. Maybe that is why he won? What a concept foreign to some other participants in Brian’s product!
I haven’t liked RP racing for years. Massive pileups are not for me
Same here. If I want to watch a demolition derby, I go to a demolition derby.
With Briscoe and Gibbs in front the speed was 188 mph.
With Logano and Nemechek in front the speed was 192 mph.
With Wallace, Bell and Heim in front lap 152 the speed was 167 mph.
Why do they save gas? They know they have to pit. Run fast, pit and run fast.
Buddy Baker and other real “racers” would lap the field in less than 50 laps.
If the TV didn’t tell us they were running 3/4 throttle and saving gas, would we really know?
You’re right though, if everyone’s running full throttle, they all have to take the same amount of gas. But no, they all have to play games because of the stupid stage cautions.
The lap times tell us how fast, or controlled, they are running. When you see a car running five or six cars back pull to the third lane and pass the cars to reach the lead in one corner there is something wrong with that picture. It is usually a Toy or Mr. H car.
Cars in the outside or inside lane fall ten cars back and stay there for a while and miraculously work their way to pull even with the other lane and “stall” there. Repeat.
I was pissed about the fuel saving parade lap BS, but overall I thought it was a decent Daytona 500 race. It checked all the boxes of what you expect from a restrictor plate/tapered spacer race.
Congrats to Reddick, he got the monkey off his back early and now he doesn’t have to hear about his non-winning streak the rest of the season.
While I’m not a fan of the Chase format overall (I’d rather it be a full season format), the best part is not hearing the words “… punched his ticket into the playoffs…” after the first race.
Just another wreck fest. Either turn the cars loose or eliminate these so-called plate races from th schedule. Pack racing is boring to watch and produces only torn-up race cars.
Now onto Atlanta. Which used to be my favorite track but is now a worse version of Daytona. Hard to believe once upon a time Mark Martin won a caution free RP race at Talladega . Can we just skip to race four of the season please? No need for road courses either.
The Nextgen has too much drag. The fuel saving, comes from a lack of passing, and the lack of passing comes from a crazy drag ratio between a single car and a pack of cars. Previous Gens a single car can get a run, pop out of line, complete a pass and then move back in line on its own. Now a single car pulling out of line is a recipe for getting sent to the back. Because there is too much drag. Listening to Connor on DBC he mentioned how he could still be at 40% in the back of the pack while the leader is at 100%. That’s also a drag symptom. The spoiler is creating a low pressure area that is helping to “suck” the car behind it. Notably the NOAPS car has a much smaller spoiler and does not have this problem.
So the drag is coming from the giant spoiler. The giant spoiler comes from a safety perspective, wanting to keep the cars from going too fast (catch fences have force ratings etc). And the cars are going too fast because they are generating too much power. And THAT comes from the desire for a single engine package for every race.
So why can’t NASCAR and the OEM’s find a way to reduce horsepower just for Daytona and Talladega? I’m an engineer (won the Reno Air Races twice, and Skyfiesta air races last year). I’ve seen the time and money and personnel that it takes to squeeze every last fraction of horsepower from a given engine. That’s the hard part. NASCAR and the OEMs need to find a modern bolt-on “restrictor plate”. And then they need to test and tune that “restrictor plate” to get the drag ratio of a single car to a pack a bit closer to 1:1 (or whatever the Gen4 and Gen 6 had because right now it feels like 3:1).
Hopefully NASCAR has some people working on this.