Livescore
If you ask any NASCAR driver what is the most important factor in winning the Daytona 500, the answer usually comes back the same. You need luck.
And, for the second year in a row William Byron had that luck to win back-to-back Daytona 500s.
As is usually the case, the race was decided in the last 10, or maybe 15 laps, of this 200-lap signature start of the NASCAR season.
Denny Hamlin, a three-time winner of the Daytona 500, was in a good spot to win as the race headed for an overtime lap. Cole Custer and Chase Briscoe were battling for position near the lead when they made contact. The incident drew in Hamlin, who spun out as his car headed for the infield.
Byron was ninth entering the final lap and stayed high as cars to his inside were collected into the chaos. He stayed close to the wall with Tyler Reddick in tow and won the race with a good drive, a good car and a lot of luck.
“Obviously [I had] some good fortune but I just trusted my instincts on the last lap there,” Byron said. “I felt like they were getting squirrely on the bottom and I was honestly going to go third lane (high) regardless because I was probably sixth coming down the backstretch.”
It was the 15th win in nine years for Byron, who drives a Chevrolet for Hendricks Motorsports.
The overtime was set up with five laps to go when Christopher Bell was challenging Hamlin for the lead when he got loose on the outside, hit the wall and then created havoc with the cars in back of him.
Ryan Preece got the worst of it in the nine-car accident as he pinwheeled down the backstretch, partly upside down, before righting the car and coming to a rest. Preece, and all other drivers in the wreck, were not seriously injured and were released from the infield care center.
“We had a really good car,” Preece said. “Honestly, I don’t even know what happened in front of me. I was in line pushing, and when you get down to the end of these races, we are all just really aggressive. It is just the position we are in.”
Some of the bigger names in the sport went out with 15 laps to go. Joey Logano, Chase Elliott and Kyle Busch were all collected in a 10-car wreck that dashed any hope of winning the race. The accident started when Logano and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. were both going for the same space with neither one wanting to surrender. What was surrendered was their chance to win.
One of the surprise outcomes of the day belonged to seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, who usually plays the role of team owner rather than driving. He qualified 40th, next to last, for the race.
“This feels incredible,” Johnson said. “I have emotions that I didn’t expect to have. I’ve never been in this position as an owner and it’s really opened up a different set of emotions. And the pride that I have in this company, now that we’re trying to achieve and the journey we’re on. I’m so satisfied, so happy right now.”
It seemed as if the race would never get finished after 3 hours, 30 minutes of rain delays, all in the first 20 laps of the race. Cars sat parked on pit road, covered in team tarps, as the storm moved through. Central Florida has been mostly dry the past 10 days but on Sunday afternoon a cold front blew through the area. NASCAR anticipated a problem and moved the start time of the race up an hour. It wasn’t near enough.
In real time, the race covered 7 hours, 35 minutes. There were eight cautions over 47 laps. There were 56 lead changes.
Austin Cindric, who finished eighth, led 59 laps before getting caught up in some of the late race chaos. Logano led 43 laps before being eliminated from contention. Ryan Blaney led 23 of the 200 laps.
Even though a Chevrolet won the race, it was a good day and night for Toyota, who finished second through fifth with Reddick, Johnson, Briscoe and John Hunter Nemechek.
“I never really finished a race here unless it was 40 laps down, so I’ll take second,” Reddick said. “We wanted to get a good start to the year and we scored a lot of points [Sunday].”
Kyle Busch, winner of 63 races in 22 seasons, was in a good spot to win his first Daytona 500 in his 20th try. It was on Dale Earnhardt’s 20th try that he won his first Daytona 500. But the synergy between two of the biggest names in the history of the sport did not occur on Sunday.
Instead, what started as a test of endurance in NASCAR’s most prestigious race, turned into a marathon filled with traps, trips and turmoil. You know, just like any Daytona 500.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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