The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series returns to action Saturday evening at Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway for the Bennett Transportation & Logistics 250 (5 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
For the second consecutive week, Craftsman Truck Series regular Gio Ruggiero returns to Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 19 Toyota. After brother Carson Ware drove the No. 30 Barrett Cope Racing Chevrolet at Daytona, Cody Ware will pilot the entry at EchoPark.
Cup Series regular Ross Chastain makes his first O’Reilly Auto Parts Series start of the 2026 season in the No. 32 Jordan Anderson Racing Chevrolet.
A spectacle is what the Daytona 500 always is, and the 2026 iteration of the “Great American Race” was no exception, with Tyler Reddick leading the last lap — and outlasting the ensuing carnage — to capture the crown-jewel victory.
Though Reddick and 23XI Racing were the chief victors of the race weekend, plenty of other drivers picked up a hefty dose of positive momentum, too. Of course, not every driver was as lucky, with others leaving Daytona in a rut. See which drivers are on the upswing and downturn following the stretch of action at the “World Center of Racing.”
What happened: The No. 38 Ford had a knack for speed early and often. Smith not only captured the Stage 1 victory (his first in NASCAR’s premier series) but was in position during the final lap to achieve the win, battling with Chase Elliott, Reddick and other big hitters in the final circuit. Smith’s 41-point performance ranked second among all drivers, with only Reddick surpassing that total (58).
What’s next: Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway is on deck for the 26-year-old California native, where, in 2025, he not only fared well in qualifying (he started both contests in the top eight) but finished the race itself on good terms, too, via an 11th- and seventh-place result in the spring and summer, respectively. More good fortune could be on the way for Smith and the No. 38 squad.
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2. Chris Buescher, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford
Started: 41st
Finished: 7th
What happened: A wreck during the first Duel race forced Buescher to a backup car, but that didn’t prevent the Prosper, Texas, native from, well, prospering. Buescher finished inside the top 10 in both stages (sixth and seventh, respectively), one of only three drivers to do so. Also of note: Buescher was one of only four cars not involved in any accidents during the Daytona 500’s entirety. Keep the car clean, and good things tend to happen.
What’s next: Atlanta has been a mixed bag for Buescher. On one hand, he does have five top 10s in 15 starts, with two of those top 10s coming in the last four contests there. On the other hand, he’s finished 30th or worse in two of the last three races there. Which way will the pendulum swing this time around? Good question.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
3. Joey Logano, No. 22 Team Penske Ford
Started: 3rd
Finished: 3rd
What happened: The Duel 1 winner continued the positive swing into Daytona’s main event, finishing third and tallying the fifth-most points (36). Though the No. 22 pilot was caught up in the last-lap fracas coming to the start/finish line, such a week — and race — proved to be a solid starting point to begin the 2026 campaign.
What’s next: There’s no doubt that Logano is looking for a bit of redemption at Atlanta, given his most recent race there in June 2025 — where he started on the pole — resulted in a 36th-place finish. That said, Logano is a two-time winner at the Georgia facility, so the opportunity to rebound there is well within the realm of possibility.
Patrick McDermott | Getty Images
THREE DOWN ⬇️
1. Alex Bowman, No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Started: 21st
Finished: 40th
What happened: With a ninth-place finish to conclude Stage 1, it looked as if Bowman was on the path toward contention at the “World Center of Racing.” However, disaster struck late in Stage 2, when a 20-car pileup — and the resulting damage — proved to be too much for the No. 48 Chevy to continue action.
What’s next: One of Bowman’s top performances of the 2025 campaign came at Atlanta, when the No. 48 driver led 32 laps and finished third during the summer swing. With Atlanta on tap, that means a rebound could very well be on the docket.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
2. Chase Briscoe, No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Started: 2nd
Finished: 36th
What happened: A second consecutive front-row start in the “Great American Race” seemed to be a positive sign that Briscoe would tally a second straight top five in the crown-jewel bout. That proved not to be the case, though; a Lap 85 incident resulted in the No. 19 sliding and receiving damage, and though Briscoe continued racing afterward, he finished multiple laps down, completing only 188 of the scheduled 200 circuits.
What’s next: Atlanta has been a tough nut to crack for Briscoe in his Cup career. In 10 career Cup races at the track, Briscoe has zero top-10 finishes, three DNFs and a 24.0 average finish. In other words, it could be tough sledding once again for one of 2025’s breakout performers.
Kevin C. Cox | Getty Images
3. Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Started: 12th
Finished: 35th
What happened: All signs pointed to Joe Gibbs Racing making a late-race push at Daytona, and Bell was no exception, being well within the top 15 as the remaining laps neared single digits. A Lap 192 caution removed that notion, with Bell and JGR teammate Denny Hamlin making contact near the exit of Turn 4, causing both to hit the inside wall. The wreck proved too much to handle, with Bell unable to finish the race after the fact.
What’s next: While Bell leaves Daytona with a sour taste, he enters Atlanta with sweet possibilities. Bell enters the spring Atlanta bout as the defending winner, despite starting 32nd and leading only one lap during last February’s run there.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — If winning the Daytona 500 changes your life, it apparently starts with your face.
Tyler Reddick’s Daytona 500 victory was scant seconds old and already his eyes, wet with tears, bulged inside his helmet. His face, pink with exertion and emotion, radiated joy.
Neither his eyes nor his face betrayed any doubt about the outcome. His brain, though, wanted to tap the brakes. Reddick didn’t want to celebrate yet. Not until it was official. Who can blame him? His life was about to start a new chapter — and so was NASCAR’s — so he wanted to be sure he was right. He worried he had missed something — and indeed there was a lot to miss in the crazy final lap — and maybe the caution had come out, and he didn’t know it.
Three times, he hit his microphone.
Three times, he asked his crew if he had won.
Three times, he was met with silence.
Where the hell was his team?
“I think they were trying to (answer),” he says. “But everyone was losing their mind.”
As well they should.
The final lap of the 2026 Daytona 500 was as chaotic as they come.
The driver who led when the white flag fell, Carson Hocevar, wrecked and finished 18th. Chase Elliott held the lead coming off Turn 4 on the final lap — the sport rose to its collective feet as NASCAR’s favorite son barreled toward his signature win! — but he got lightly doored by Reddick, then wrecked and finished fourth. The third-place car, driven by Joey Logano, crossed the start/finish line perpendicular to the oncoming field, which normally would be straight terrifying, though by that time just about everybody was either wrecked or wrecking, so maybe it wasn’t so bad.
It’s funny to look back at one of the big questions heading into this race — whether the end of the “win-and-you’re-in” era of the playoffs would change the way drivers approach the ends of races. Maybe, one line of reasoning went, if you take away that outsized incentive, drivers will be more conservative and not wreck so dang much on the final lap.
(Laughs hysterically)
There was zero evidence of that.
When Reddick exited his No. 45 car and hugged Michael Jordan — his team’s co-owner and the most famous and popular athlete in history — after leading only a few hundred yards of the race, the rough equivalent of a halfcourt buzzer beater, it became the latest addition to Daytona International Speedway’s long run of “perfect-storyline days” that would seem made up if they didn’t happen on live TV and weren’t witnessed by several hundred thousand people.
That list includes the 1979 Daytona 500 being the first broadcast in its entirety and ending in a fight as a snowed-in Eastern seaboard TV audience watched with their collective mouths agape, Richard Petty getting his 200th win with President Ronald Reagan in attendance and Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning the first race at Daytona after his dad died there on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
Reddick’s mad dash to the checkered flag, his hug of Jordan, his heartfelt embrace of his son amid the celebration, is a story worth telling today, tomorrow and for years to come for the joy of the driver, the joy of the owner and the joy of a good story.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
The joy of tension
Or really, the joy of many good stories.
The day overflowed with storylines. Connor Zilisch, the 19-year-old phenom, ran his first Daytona 500. He started next to 50-year-old Jimmie Johnson, the seven-time champion who is Zilisch’s racing hero and was competing in his next-to-last Daytona 500.
Bubba Wallace, Reddick’s teammate who has twice finished second in this race, led a race-high 40 laps, and later said it was the best Daytona 500 he had ever run. He finished 10th. Brad Keselowski, owner and driver of the No. 6 Ford, limped around the track with a cane after breaking his femur in the offseason. He had a sliver of a chance to win until he wrecked with the finish line in sight.
Yes, the 68th running of the Great American Race even had something for detractors, in particular stretches where the entire field appeared to be in fuel savings mode. That meant cars lined up three wide for 10 rows deep for lap after lap. Someone asked Reddick’s crew chief after the race whether that’s fixable. A better question might be, why do we want to fix that? Do we really not want 30 cars to be within a second of each other, as they were for several stretches?
Critics have a point — drivers are running at less than full throttle in the biggest race of the year. But maybe we should think about it differently. What we’ve lost in speed we’ve made up for in tension. The tension of waiting for something to give as the cars barrel through turn after turn inches from each other on every side.
When 30 cars race three wide for 10 rows deep, everybody has to behave. Everybody has to stay in line. Everybody has to play along. Everybody has to submit their own desires to the good of the group.
Does that sound like something NASCAR drivers will do?
Not for long.
Chris Graythen | Getty Images
‘What’s going to be in this chapter?’
All week, optimism permeated the NASCAR world. Hope had arrived anew. That’s true every year at Daytona, but especially so this year. You could see it on social media, hear it in driver’s comments, sense it as you jostled cheek to cheek on the grid before the sold-out race with the biggest purse in its history.
“There’s been so much that has gone on,” Johnson says. “Our sport has seen some headwinds in the last four to six months. To have that all behind us now and have the biggest race of the year kick off our season, it’s the perfect thing. It’s the right medicine for us.”
This was more than just the first race of a new season, more than a pivot, more than a reset.
It felt like the first race in the rest of NASCAR’s life.
Or as Jordan put it: “This is a whole new beginning.”
And a much-needed one at that.
Keselowski has a shelf full of NASCAR season yearbook magazines at home. They recap the season that just ended and look ahead to the season to come. “When you flip through them, some of the seasons just blah together,” he says. “Like, oh, that was a different season?”
Every now and then — like this season — a big change happens, and NASCAR enters a new chapter.
As last season concluded with an unsatisfying end of the final race (which managed to make a worthy champion in Kyle Larson seem less so), plus the lawsuit between two teams (and led by 23XI Racing, the team that Jordan started with Denny Hamlin five years ago) and NASCAR that ended in a settlement, it was clear NASCAR needed a jolt of … something.
That jolt came in the form of a “new” points system. Gone is the win and you’re in, elimination-style system. In its place is a return to The Chase in which the season is broken up into 26 regular-season races and a 10-race Chase.
“I think all of the industry is looking forward to having an historic year,” says Christopher Bell, driver of the No. 20 Toyota. “The changes that came to our sport are massively positive.”
NASCAR has had other “new era” seasons like this. When Winston signed on as the title sponsor before the 1972 season, NASCAR changed overnight. That year is now seen as the start of NASCAR’s modern era. The next new chapter started in 2004 with the departure of Winston, the arrival of Nextel and the introduction of The Chase.
With the return to The Chase and the end of the lawsuit, NASCAR again finds itself at a critical juncture in its history. There’s an old proverb that says if you get on the wrong train, get off at the next station. That’s where the sport is now — embarking on what everyone seems to believe is the right train taking us to the right place.
“I’m really curious what’s going to be in this chapter,” Keselowski said. “What’s it going to be known for?”
Chris Graythen | Getty Images
How to bring back the joy
For an answer about what this next chapter of NASCAR’s life will be known for, let’s start in the lobby of a hotel a block from Daytona International Speedway a few days before the race. The quiet breakfast area burst to life upon the arrival of Monica Pickerill, a member of NASCAR’s Fan Council who attended her first Daytona 500 in 1969 and, as of Sunday, has been to 26 in a row.
As she ate breakfast, seemingly everyone in the hotel stopped to say hello. She likened the opening of this season to the moments after a married couple has a fight where one promises to change, and the other folds their arms and says, “prove it.”
She wants NASCAR to laser focus on one question: “How do we bring back the joy?”
What a great question.
And in Sunday’s race, we found the answer.
There’s the joy of winning, broadcast on the face of Jordan, co-owner with Hamlin of 23XI, which Reddick drives for.
NASCAR has had famous car owners in the past, but none as famous as Jordan, and none who clearly love being involved as much as he does. He delights in telling stories of boyhood family vacations to NASCAR races. His winning crew chief, Billy Scott, Hamlin and Reddick all talked about the joy they get from bringing joy to Jordan. It’s good to be the king. It’s good to please him, too.
Who better to herald the resurgence of joy in NASCAR than the world’s most famous athlete who grew up loving this stuff? “I’m ecstatic,” Jordan said in a Fox Sports interview after the race. “I don’t even know what to say. It feels like I won a championship.”
It’s worth noting, too, that Jordan and NASCAR CEO Jim France, leading figures in that aforementioned lawsuit, shared big smiles and handshakes in Victory Lane, a signal that relationships are being patched up as the sport moves forward.
And there’s the joy of dreams fulfilled, modeled by Reddick. His joy for racing began when he was a boy sliding across dirt tracks in his home state of California. He eventually moved to stock cars, won two championships in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and had three straight multi-win Cup seasons before going winless last year.
He told a story of attending the Daytona 500 in 2009. He sat in the stands with his family, mesmerized by those sheet metal behemoths flying around this concrete Valhalla at nearly 200 mph. As an up-and-coming racer, surely he wondered what it would be like to drive one of those cars rather than watch them.
He told another story of the first time he did just that. It was five years later. He participated in a single-car test that he needed to pass in order to enter an ARCA Menards Series race the next day and then the Craftsman Truck Series race the day after that. He said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he came off Turn 4 and saw Daytona’s massive grandstands. “I’ve always dreamed of being able to drive off of Turn 4 through the tri-oval and see the stands.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Riley Herbst believed he was making a move to win the Daytona 500. Brad Keselowski thought the move was overzealous.
Coming to the checkered flag in Sunday’s Daytona 500, Herbst’s No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota jolted to his right and in front of Keselowski’s No. 6 RFK Racing Ford, hoping to get a push to propel him from third to glory in the “Great American Race.” But Keselowski’s momentum was too strong and Herbst’s move too late, triggering a multicar pileup as Tyler Reddick scurried to his first Daytona 500 triumph.
The final lap was filled with chaos as NASCAR’s best became NASCAR’s frenzied, first triggered by a crash in Turn 1 on the white-flag lap, which allowed a select few, such as Reddick, Herbst and Keselowski, to race for the win. Chase Elliott leaped to the lead with help from Zane Smith, but 23XI Racing teammates Reddick and Herbst lined up in third and fourth to pounce through Turns 3 and 4.
Coming to the checkered flag, Reddick carved to Elliott’s left. Herbst was left with a decision and opted for the top lane to take Keselowski’s momentum. Instead, there was contact and carnage across the start/finish line.
“We got all spread out wide down the back straightaway, and obviously I chose to go with the 45 (Reddick),” Herbst told FOX Sports. “I pushed him, and he made that move on the 9 (Elliott) to go side-by-side, and I don’t know truly what happened. I went to pop three-wide to make it a photo finish top of three at the start/finish line, and it must have been a matter of inches.”
Close margins or not, Keselowski was not impressed by the sophomore’s choice.
“Oh, the 35 (Herbst) just wrecked me out of nowhere for no reason,” Keselowski said. “That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. He had no chance of blocking my run. I had a huge run. I don’t know if I could have gotten the 45 or 47 (Ricky Stenhouse Jr.), but I would have liked to find out because my run was fast. And the 35 just wrecked us and himself. Pretty stupid.”
Chris Graythen | Getty Images
Herbst was adamant his move was made in an attempt to win the Daytona 500: “I wasn’t trying to make a move to go to second.”
Keselowski, however, was convinced Herbst was doomed long before the block was made.
“I thought, well, a one-lane block kind of makes sense,” said Keselowski, the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion. “But to block from the very bottom all the way to the top and wreck yourself and everybody else is just stupid. Very, very stupid.”
Keselowski, co-owner of RFK Racing and driver of its No. 6 Ford, has been chasing the Daytona 500 since 2010. He remains winless in now 17 tries despite multiple close calls with the Harley J. Earl Trophy. Herbst made his fourth start in the “Great American Race” on Sunday. Both finished inside the top 10 despite crashing — Keselowski fifth; Herbst a career-best eighth. But what could have been Sunday night?
“It’s fractions of a second, and we’re trying to win the Daytona 500,” Herbst said. “Brad’s been trying to win for (17 years). He’ll tell you that it’s a matter of inches, and we were on the wrong side of inches.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The celebration of 23XI Racing’s first Daytona 500 win was a star-studded Sunday soirée, one missing only the velvet ropes.
NBA legend Michael Jordan held court in the center of Victory Lane, embracing the team members he’s helped bring together in the relatively short time since the organization launched for the 2021 season. NFL standout Puka Nacua, who soaked in a weekend-long immersion into the NASCAR world, jumped into the middle of the jubilation photos. The team cheered the Los Angeles Rams wideout’s arrival and promptly beered him, and the bottom of their 12-ounce cans went skyward in a hurry. Hall of Famer Kurt Busch, the No. 45 team’s first driver, dropped in to pay his respects to the organization that gave him his final ride.
There was plenty of “man of the hour” billing to go around, but Tyler Reddick, who wheeled his way to the biggest victory of his career, wore it as well as anyone.
Reddick savored an improbable Daytona 500 victory Sunday, cutting through all the chaos that thinned the field of pre-race favorites. He led only the last lap, steering clear of two crashes and converting a final-stretch maneuver past Chase Elliott to win it, helping to turn back the disappointment of a winless 2025.
His hoisting of the Harley J. Earl Trophy was a height-difference alley-oop with Jordan, who has cradled a few of the NBA’s Larry O’Briens in his day.
“It’s like winning a championship, like a huge championship,” Jordan said as he was whisked from Victory Lane. “Unbelievable.”
Reddick shared in that disbelief, asking his team multiple times to assure him he’d won. When that confirmation came, he slid the No. 45 Toyota through the infield grass in a fit of joy.
That swoop helped to soothe a year of personal and professional heartache for the 30-year-old driver. Reddick’s youngest son, Rookie, had surgery last October to treat a kidney tumor, an ailment that added family stress to an already difficult NASCAR Cup Series season — his first without a win since 2021. Sunday, Reddick was happy to report that Rookie was much-improved and present with his older brother, Beau, for the Victory Lane festivities. The win puts his professional career back in order, too.
“To have last year play out the way that it did was — it was rough,” Reddick said. “Obviously, everything else happening outside of the race track was not easy to manage, as well, with my son. So to get through all that, and here we go, it’s 2026, and go race, I definitely worked really hard in the offseason, but it’s tough when you don’t win. You’ve got all these expectations to win multiple races, for championships, and we didn’t really live up to those last year. …
“To be able to do it the way that we did and just be in the mix at the end is everything we could have asked for. I’m just really proud of how honest everyone at 23XI on my team and in the organization was with each other, having the tough conversations to kind of work this stuff out so that when we get into 2026, we’re not trying to fix 2025 into 2026. We’re reset, we’re ready to go. It’s one race, certainly, but do it the way that we did today, with the day that we kind of had, it says a lot about the work we put in in the offseason.”
James Gilbert | Getty Images
If the strife of the season took its toll on the No. 45 team and its driver, crew chief Billy Scott was intent on not letting it carry over. Reddick was one spot shy of winning the “Great American Race” last year, and his total of seven top-five finishes included several instances where the win column seemed within reach.
Sunday’s effort, Scott said, helped to turn the page.
“From my side and the things we worked on, certainly frustrated, certainly disappointed, as all of us were. We had expectations and do have expectations way higher than that,” Scott said. “But it was never a frustration of discouragement or disappointment or blame or anything else. It was collectively, how do we get better, how do we work on the things that we can improve ourselves. And (Reddick) has been all in on everything that’s come up, from ownership, from within our team, and he’s entered the season with a new, I think, rejuvenated outlook on things. I think we’ve all felt that internally, and tonight it shows.”
“This puts them in a great spot, and it certainly takes a lot of pressure off the shoulders,” said team co-owner Hamlin, a three-time 500 champ as a driver and a first-timer on the executive side. “Certainly last year that we didn’t have the performance that we wanted. You know, we’re not happy with top 10 in the final standings. That’s not where we’re building this team to be, but they were consistent, just never could quite get that win. But now this allows them to just, in my opinion, just race a little freer.”
Hamlin said that a 23XI team meeting a few weeks ago served as a reminder to its four drivers, stressing how important the Daytona 500 was to its famous team co-owner. The emphasis was clear, that the responsibility rested with the four drivers carrying the 23XI banner. “Do you guys understand the responsibilities that you have, that you have the power to bring joy to Michael Jordan?” Hamlin recalled saying. “Like, you have that power, and nobody else can do it. There’s nothing else that can bring him the joy that seeing what his team can do, and they took it to heart today.”
The celebration was reminiscent of Jordan’s delight in a 2024 victory at Talladega Superspeedway, where all the right moves in the final laps produced Reddick’s first win on a drafting-style track. Jordan carried Beau Reddick to Victory Lane, and his Jordan Brand was featured prominently with a bespoke sneaker design in the No. 45’s paint scheme.
But what’s it like to win a championship for Michael Jordan? Billy Scott, the No. 45 team’s veteran crew chief, said he has trouble grasping it.
“Like Denny said, it’s just cool to see him get the joy out of that,” Scott said. “I can’t imagine what it’s like playing at the level he did and accomplishing the things he did and then just walking away from it and going back to the things that the rest of us experience in daily life. This is a huge day for us and a big celebration, but I can’t even imagine how it compares to the things he’s accomplished. But to watch him genuinely be excited and the celebration that he has is a lot of what drives us. I think Denny has always commented that we really celebrate when we get a win, and part of that is feeding off of that. I remember Talladega, and today was much the same, of the level of excitement he has is unmatched.”
If anyone came close to equaling the elation, it was Reddick. Shortly after he arrived for his post-race press conference, Reddick was introduced as the latest Daytona 500 winner. “Champion,” he quickly but gently corrected the moderator with a smile.
However he’s introduced from now on, that label will stick.
“It’s the stuff you dream of as a kid,” Reddick said. “I definitely didn’t look in the future and know that I’d be driving for Michael Jordan in a Cup car. But to be able to have someone like Michael Jordan believe in me enough to want me to drive here, someone like Denny Hamlin to believe in me enough to want me to drive here, and then deliver in these clutch moments like I’ve been able to do over the last couple years — 2025 I didn’t, obviously — but to bounce back from that rough year we had last year and just try and do my best to deliver on the promises that I made to them and vice versa, just to be able to do these great things for Michael, someone who loves racing as much as he does and is passionate about winning as much as I am or Denny is, to be able to come through on those promises and meet those expectations is the type of stuff that you just love to be able to do.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — William Byron’s quest for a third consecutive Harley J. Earl Trophy was nearly over before it began during Sunday’s Daytona 500. But the No. 24 team did what the No. 24 team does: maximize its races. Such a mindset led to a 12th-place finish, respectable to begin the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Tallying the top-15 result didn’t come easy. BJ McLeod spun on Lap 5 of the 200-lap marathon, triggering a multicar pileup. Included was Byron, who ran into the rear bumper of Justin Allgaier and JR Motorsports’ No. 40 effort. The No. 24 Chevrolet ricocheted off the wall, causing significant right-side damage.
“Our right-front suspension was bent,” Byron said, “so our car was tracking weirdly and super loose and tight at the same time.”
By the end of the opening stage, Byron rallied to 13th position, third of those who made multiple pit stops throughout the first 65 laps. He remained clean until a colossal 20-car pileup occurred on Lap 122, when Allgaier faded up on Denny Hamlin at the front of the field. The No. 24 car was in the eye of the storm, receiving additional harm.
After several trips to pit road for repair, Byron remained in the lead draft as the field began stretching its fuel tanks. The No. 24 car was among seven cars to pit during a final sequence of green-flag pit stops on Lap 188. When the field bunched back together, he was third of the cars that had pitted before a trio of Toyotas wrecked with nine laps remaining in regulation.
One lap after the restart, Byron was pushed to the lead but wasn’t scored as the leader when the field crossed the line. When he was pushed out front by Brad Keselowski, he thought the No. 24 was too wounded to throw haymaker blocks at the front of the field.
“I thought I was in the catbird seat,” Byron said of taking the lead. “I felt everyone was going to continue to block and move up off the bottom. I had Brad, who is a really good pusher, with me. I’m like, ‘man, this could be perfect. We could get lined up, and I might get pushed too far out front.’ It didn’t materialize that way. The bottom was a struggle all day.
“All of those guys blew past us, even when we were connected and pushing. Unfortunate, but I don’t feel like I could have taken the top lane and hung on to my car — it was pretty beat up.”
On a final lap that saw two separate excursions, Byron had to ease up entering Turn 1 as race leader Carson Hocevar was turned in front of the field. Byron evaded to the left, dropping below the yellow line. When he re-entered the pack, he clipped the apron and drifted up the racing surface. He scurried around for a 12th-place finish, his first top-15 result in the “Great American Race” outside of his victories in the previous two years.
Even being in contention for the victory toward the end of 500 miles was a morale boost to begin the 2026 season. Ultimately, it was a championship-esque performance, though it was the opener to a 36-race campaign.
“I couldn’t believe we had a shot at the end,” Byron said. “I thought now I have a shot lining up on the front two rows. That’s all you can ask for, really. I got (Tyler Reddick) out to a decent lead on the restart, and the bottom was the place to be. There was one time I got clear and probably could have taken the middle, but I didn’t know if my car could handle the pushes up there. I had to keep my car straight, so I felt if I went to make a block, I would wreck.
“The Lap (5) crash, I thought, was going to be the end of our competitive day, and we did a good job patching it up.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The emotional roller coaster of Daytona 500 glory was on full display Sunday night.
Carson Hocevar, Erik Jones, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick all led on the final lap, if only for milliseconds for some. But only one of them — Tyler Reddick — drove his car home unscathed without the crushing heartbreak only Daytona can dish.
Elliott led most of the 200th lap at Daytona International Speedway, inheriting the lead after Hocevar and Jones collided entering Turn 1 on the white-flag circuit. Still holding that lead off the final turn, Elliott looked like he may finally be heading toward that elusive Harley J. Earl Trophy.
For better or worse, Elliott knew not to get ahead of himself.
“I’m not the type of person that ever lets myself get there in the first place, so I knew it wasn’t over,” Elliott said.
Instead, Riley Herbst’s block of Brad Keselowski coming to the checkered flag tipped Herbst into Elliott’s right rear as Reddick stormed past Elliott’s left. Elliott, the 2020 Cup Series champion, went hard into the SAFER barrier and slid to a halt, ending his 2026 Daytona 500 in a shower of the wrong kind of fireworks. Reddick won ahead of Stenhouse, Logano, Elliott and Keselowski, all left in smoking heaps of stock cars.
“At that point, nobody’s lifting, and I totally get that,” Elliott said. “This obviously sucks to be that close there in the closing lap and have the lead off (Turn) 4 and come up short. But I think momentum had just shifted the other direction, and it was just all defense, and being on defense in the last lap is tough.”
Stenhouse became a Daytona 500 champion in 2023, but if only for a moment, he saw the light that could have led to his second “Great American Race” victory in four years.
“When I think the 6 and 35 got together, the seas parted, and, man, I shot the center.” Stenhouse said. “And I thought I was gonna come across the line as a winner. I didn’t see the 45 up there, so pretty bummed we got a second-place finish and not a win out of it.”
While Reddick and his 23XI team celebrated in jubilation, there was a deflated feeling that permeated the perimeter of Daytona’s infield care center, a building filled with four of the top five finishers in the “Great American Race,” with Reddick the lone escapee.
Brad Keselowski, the 2012 Cup champion, is now 0-for-17 in his attempts to win the Daytona 500, this time with a fifth-place finish perhaps the most difficult task yet. Keselowski broke his right femur in December while on vacation but was cleared by NASCAR to return to competition on Feb. 9, just six days before Sunday’s 500-miler.
“A few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I was gonna get to run this race,” Keselowski said.
His leg felt good despite the crash, he added. But in the end, all he could chalk the result up to was chance.
“I felt good about just being in position for sure,” Keselowski said. “You know, at the end, it’s a roll of the dice, and who’s gonna wreck who, and who’s gonna make good moves and bad moves. And the dice didn’t fully roll our way.”
There was, of course, some added frustration in the way those dice shook, with an ill-timed block by Herbst hindering Keselowski’s chances and triggering a multicar incident.
“Oh, the 35 just wrecked me out of nowhere for no reason,” Keselowski said. “That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. He had no chance of blocking my run. I had a huge run. I don’t know if I could have gotten the 45 (Reddick) or 47 (Stenhouse), but I would have liked to find out because my run was fast. And the 35 just wrecked us and himself. Pretty stupid.”
Herbst was instructed by spotter Joe Campbell to move high to block Keselowski’s run, but the timing went wrong — either delivered too late or not accounting for Keselowski’s rush of speed. After Herbst grinded to a stop with an eighth-place finish, Campbell issued an apology.
“Sorry. I was just trying to make something happen,” Campbell said.
That’s the essence of the Daytona 500: trying to make something historic happen. The drive and desire to win this race supersedes those of perhaps any other event on the NASCAR schedule. Winners of the Daytona 500 are known eternally as champions, their names etched in the trophy’s tiles for years to come. This race is atop drivers’ bucket lists.
“I watched a lot of NASCAR racing growing up,” Reddick said, “but I would never miss the Daytona 500 as a little kid growing up out in California, sitting with my family on Sunday watching this race. I just dreamed of one day just having an opportunity to run this race.”
He was able to walk away with the trophy. Others, like Elliott and Keselowski, are still wondering what their moments may one day feel like.
“Just hate to be that close, you know?” Elliott said. “It’s such a big deal down here, and it kind of sucks. But that’s part of this deal.”
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Tyler Reddick waited for the last possible moment to make his move — and it paid off with victory in Sunday’s 68th running of the Daytona 500.
In the final 500 yards of the “Great American Race,” Reddick got a welcome push from teammate Riley Herbst, muscled his way past Chase Elliott and powered his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota toward the finish line.
As the track exploded in chaos behind him, when Herbst tried an ill-fated late block on Brad Keselowski and a knot of cars slid sideways across the finish line, Reddick already was celebrating a 0.308-second victory over 2023 Daytona 500 winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Reddick was the 25th different leader — a record for the race — and the only lap he led was the last one.
After a winless 2025, Reddick expressed both satisfaction and relief at doing what 23XI co-owners Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan hired him to do.
“Last year was really hard for all of us, hard for me,” Reddick said. “When you’re a Cup driver and you get to this level and drive for Michael Jordan, it’s expected you win every single year.
“For us to go on that drought, it made us look hard in the mirror, and I am really proud of everyone on our Chumba Casino Toyota Camry. Worked really hard in the offseason, and there were many points in this race where we weren’t making decisions we wanted to, but we just reset, and every opportunity we got to reset, we went back at it.
“Just speechless. I didn’t know if I’d ever win this race. It’s surreal, honestly. The best part is my son (Beau) asked before this race, ‘Are you finally going to win this race?’ Something about today just felt right.”
The final two laps produced more plot twists than a dime novel. Spire Motorsports driver Carson Hocevar led at the white flag but spun in Turn 1 and fell out of the lead pack, taking Erik Jones and Michael McDowell with him. Elliott took control and appeared ready to win his first Crown Jewel race before Reddick gained momentum off Herbst’s bumper.
Moments later, Herbst’s attempted block stopped Keselowski’s huge run near the outside wall and sealed the win for Reddick.
“I’m not really sure what happened with the first (Hocevar) wreck,” Elliott said. “But we ended up kind of getting gifted the lead, and the 38 (Zane Smith) and I had got out by ourselves down the back. He had given me a good shove off into (Turn) 3 and then it was kind of just he and I, and at that point I just felt momentum shift, like there was going to be another run coming behind us there at some point.
“Unfortunately, that was accurate, and then at that point in time, you’re just on defense. Man, that’s a really, really tough place to be, truthfully. Obviously looking back, you can run it through your mind a thousand times. Do you do something different? I feel like if I had thrown a double block on the 45 (Reddick), probably would have just crashed us at that point in time.”
Behind Stenhouse, 2015 Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano slid across the finish line in third place, followed by Elliott and Keselowski.
“Yeah, a lot of chaos,” said Keselowski, who raced while still recovering from a broken right femur. “Last restart I gave William Byron a great push, and just wasn’t enough to move our lane. I was giving him all I had, and then right here at the end I had this huge run and the 35 (Herbst) wrecked us. Really disappointed.
“Tore up the 9 (Elliott), tore up the 22 (Joey Logano), a bunch of cars that didn’t deserve to be wrecked, so that was a big bummer and really stupid. Still a decent day for us to come home with a top five and to be competitive and have a shot to win.”
As wild as the finish was, the biggest melee of the afternoon came much earlier.
With seven laps left in the second stage, contact between the No. 40 Chevrolet of Justin Allgaier and the No. 11 Toyota of three-time Daytona 500 winner Hamlin ignited a 20-car wreck in the tri-oval.
Allgaier was leading the top line but left a narrow lane open to his right. As Hamlin attempted to fill the hole, Allgaier’s car twitched toward the wall, turned across the nose of Hamlin’s Camry and lit the fuse of chaos behind him.
“I got to the outside lane there, got to the front — got the outside lane,” Allgaier said. “And I really thought I had blocked enough of that top lane that the top line was just going to fall in behind.
“And as soon as Denny went to that quarter-panel, it just sucked me in there. It’s a hundred percent my fault. That’s the frustrating part. I should have moved it up higher. But there are moments where you get a little bit complacent. You think you did everything right, but you didn’t check all the boxes. That’s what happened there.”
Even though Herbst was listed in that incident, his car was not severely damaged and survived to become a key component in the 23XI victory, as Jordan acknowledged after the race.
“I thought Riley did an unbelievable job pushing at the end,” Jordan said. “That shows you what teamwork can really, really do. He doesn’t get enough credit. He won’t get enough credit. But we feel the love. We understand exactly what he did.
“We hung in there all day. Great strategy by the team, and we gave ourselves a chance at the end. Look, I’m ecstatic. I don’t even know what to say. It feels like I won a championship, but until I get my ring, I won’t even know.”
Smith, Chris Buescher, Herbst, Josh Berry and Bubba Wallace finished sixth through 10th, respectively. Byron, trying for a third straight Daytona 500 win, came home 12th, and pole winner Kyle Busch was 15th.
The lead changed hands among the record 25 different drivers 65 times. Smith took the first stage win — the first of his career — and Wallace won the second under caution for the 20-car accident.
The Cup Series heads to Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway next Sunday for the Autotrader 400 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Note: Post-race inspection in the Cup Series garage concluded without issue, confirming Reddick as the Daytona 500 winner.
Justin Allgaier and Denny Hamlin made contact battling for the lead down the frontstretch to spark the “Big One” late in Stage 2 of the 68th running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday.
Running second behind Allgaier, Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota received a run of momentum off Turn 4. Hamlin went to Allgaier’s right, but Allgaier pinched the No. 11 into the wall to incite a 20-car pileup .
Among those involved were defending Cup Series champion Kyle Larson, 2022 Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric, 2023 Cup champ Ryan Blaney, three-time series titleholder Joey Logano and William Byron, seeking a third consecutive win in the “Great American Race.”
Allgaier, Alex Bowman and Todd Gilliland were too damaged to continue, ending their Daytona 500 efforts after completing 123 of 200 scheduled laps.
Making his first Cup start since last year’s Daytona 500, Allgaier took onus for triggering the accident.
“I really thought I blocked enough of that top lane that the top line was gonna just fall in behind,” Allgaier said after he was evaluated and released from the infield care center. “And as soon as Denny went to that (right-rear) quarter panel, it just sucked me in there. At that point, you’re just kind of hanging on. It’s 100% my fault. That’s the frustrating part. I should have moved up higher.”
Allgaier, the 2024 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion, was driving the No. 40 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller. Together with crew chief Greg Ives, the team returned for its second entry into Cup competition after making its series debut in 2025, earning a top 10 in last year’s 500.
“It’s great that NASCAR gave us these opportunities to try to fix the car and even though we’re not running for points, it’s about pride,” an emotional Ives said. “We put a lot of heart and soul into this car, and you know, to see it lead laps and try to keep the lead is kind of emotional. You never know when the next Daytona 500 is going to be for me.”
Chase Briscoe and NASCAR Cup Series rookie Connor Zilisch were among the notable drivers involved in a multicar pileup on Lap 85 of the 68th Daytona 500.
As the field raced three-wide toward the frontstretch tri-oval, Zilisch’s No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet got loose in Turn 4 and bounced off Justin Allgaier’s No. 40 JR Motorsports Chevy. A chain reaction ensued, with Cody Ware hitting both Briscoe and Ty Gibbs to incite a wreck that also caught 2018 Daytona 500 champion Austin Dillon.
