Through Flames and Smoke, the Daytona 500 Wraps Up

Just like that, it's the morning after the Daytona 500. A race kicked off by the President and Captain America ended in smokes and flames for the sixth straight year. But this is the race everyone wants to win, the race that means more than a championship to some, the race that eludes some of the greatest drivers of all time. 

William Byron is not one of those drivers. In fact, the 27-year old driver is now a 2 time Daytona 500 winner. While he's not even close to being named in the list of all time greats, he is putting himself in some elite company. Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, Sterling Marlin, Denny Hamlin, and now William Byron. All of these names have one thing in common and it's that they are the only drivers ever to win the biggest race in NASCAR in back to back years. Glazing aside, this is a huge accomplishment for Byron. Most drivers don't even get a real chance at winning this race and he just became the youngest driver to win it multiple times. Like most superspeedway wins though, it came with its fair share of luck. After making a move to the outside line from the lead of the race, he fell all the way back to 28th with as little as 20 laps to go. There was one factor that allowed him back to the front.

Crashing and Crashing

With 15 laps left in the race, Joey Logano and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., two of the most aggressive drivers in these types of races, let the aggression take over way too early. Logano got a huge run behind Stenhouse, which Stenhouse countered with an extremely late block that luckily didn't turn him off Logano's front bumper. It wasn't done there, however. Logano kept shoving and shoving Stenhouse getting him looser and looser until a gap formed between him and the car on the bottom lane that was barely even a car width. In typical Logano fashion, he tried to shove his car into this gap where unsurprisingly he made contact with the 47 sending him into Ryan Blaney and sparked the big one. This wreck essentially eliminated some huge factors like Blaney, Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, and Logano himself.

Of course, we know the wrecking doesn't end there. Just a few laps after the restart, five laps to go, the young and inexperienced get antsy and want to do anything to win. This is the mentality that's brought us here and it only gets exemplified more and more. Cole Custer was the leader of the prophecy this year, giving Christopher Bell a huge shove. Ideally, this send Bell out front and gives Custer the opportunity to back up and get a huge run on him to take the lead of the race. Instead, Bell started getting loose with all of the pushing and rather than backing off for Bell to regain control of his car, Custer stayed in the gas on his bumper which turned Bell into the outside wall and created the highlight of the night. In the recoil off of the wall, Bell bounced back into traffic and Ryan Preece was the first car collected into all of it. The angle of contact made Preece's car ramp off of Bell's at 190mph and the air took over from there keeping the nose of his car pointed towards the sky for nearly three seconds before picking up the rear end, turning him sideways, flipping over the banking, and backing into the outside wall. 

No matter how much we try to keep these cars on the ground, the fact of the matter is that there will be flips. That doesn't mean there's nothing to change about the car to help it though. First note is that we need to figure out why these cars ramp off each other like we've never seen before. We've seen it before with Ty Gibbs at Bowman Gray and Ross Chastain in the 2022 All-Star race most notably. The difference is that Preece was going much faster and we've finally had a reason to be scared of it. Second point is the hang time of the cars. The car either soars like we saw from Preece or violently snaps upside down like we saw happen with Corey Lajoie last year at Michigan. Based on comments from drivers and engineers, the easiest fix to all of this is the removing the flat panel on the bottom of the cars. There's nothing to disrupt the air from picking up underneath of it, turning the car into a literal flat sheet of paper and we know how easy those fly. Either way, we can only hope something changes even though it seems less and less likely with each passing year.

One other thing that gets the same reaction from fans is the last lap wrecks taking everyone out at the end of these races. Every single year, it seems that all of these superspeedway races are ending with a huge wreck and the winner is just the guy that makes it through it first. Overtime was actually looking very close between Austin Cindric and Hamlin and looked like it had the potential to stay fairly clean. But just like a few laps before, Custer was the one to spark it all. He had a huge run off a push from Chase Briscoe and made a move to go to the outside around Hamlin, however Briscoe opted not to push Custer to the lead and stayed behind his teammate. Custer, realizing he made a move that likely took him out of contention for the win, tried squeezing his way back in line. The problem with that is, Briscoe had already started to fill the gap so when Custer kept moving down and down, there just wasn't enough real estate for it. Instead he went sideways in front of the entire field and marked one of the biggest wrecks I've ever seen. With Hamlin, Cindric, Briscoe, Lajoie, and Alex Bowman all being involved in some way, just two cars emerged from the smoke out front. William Byron and Tyler Reddick. After an entire week of NASCAR throwing the caution for these types of wrecks, they decided to hold off and allowed the two drivers to race it out to the line. It didn't matter though. Reddick's momentum was stalled when Hamlin made contact with him while spinning and made it impossible for him to get a run on the 24 car that never had to slow down. 

All of this was the factor to bring Byron from 28th to 1st in 20 laps. Call it luck, call it avoidance, call it the state of NASCAR, but Byron has achieved an incredible feat and all we can do now is appreciate it for what it is.

Feel Good Finishers

Jimmie Johnson - For the first time in the Next Gen era, Jimmie Johnson earned a top-25 finish. Not only was it top-25, but he finished in 3rd place! At 49 years old, Johnson placed on the podium in the biggest race of the year. Although nothing has been said, it's extremely likely that this season is his last considering he is only running two races, Daytona 500 and Coke 600, which would put him at 700 Cup starts. If this really is it for him, going out on such a high note of this finish would be the most Jimmie Johnson thing he could possibly do. Over two decades dominance being capped off with great finishes, it's almost impossible to go out on a higher note, unless you're Jeff Gordon.

John Hunter Nemechek - On a similar note, Nemechek earned his first top-five finish in the Cup Series last night, making it two cars in the top-five for Legacy Motor Club. After finishing dead last of full time drivers in the points standings last season, this is a much needed start for him and the team in general. It's no secret that Legacy has struggled with the switch to Toyota, considering we know how good Erik Jones is and seeing his struggles to compete in this car, so to see not only Johnson get a good finish but also Nemechek is a great way to kick things off for them. Having new teams enter the competitive side of things weekly is always great for the sport so I hope they can keep this pace up.

Justin Allgaier - I'm not going to lie, after watching the way his car performed in the duel race, I was doubting whether or not this team showed up with a good enough car to perform. It just looked like it had a parachute attached if it wasn't drafting off of another car. While he didn't ever really challenge for the lead at any point in the race, he lasted through everything and managed a ninth place finish for Jr Motorsports' Cup Series debut. I see this as an absolute win because it's always a risk for a new team to enter the fold of the Cup Series, especially trying to gain sponsors, but seeing that a team and driver can be successful on the track is likely to bring in even more money. Consider the fact that the money has been the thing keeping Dale Jr. out of the Cup Series and it may not be too long before we see some full time JRM entries. 

Side Note - Phantom Debris Returns?

One note I had while watching this years' Speedweeks was the seemingly phantom debris cautions. For those unfamiliar, this was a phenomenon of NASCAR calling a caution and citing debris as the reason even though there was seemingly no debris on the race track and was just an excuse to bunch the field back together for entertainment's sake. Maybe it's just poor coverage from Fox, but each time a caution was called for debris last week, there was never a shot of it either laying on the track or even being cleaned up. Fox is infamous for missing such obvious things, which is why I could see this being an issue with the coverage rather than NASCAR trying to manufacture "better" racing.

By: Derek Pierce