William Byron became just the fifth driver all-time to win back-to-back Daytona 500s on Sunday evening. However, is he a deserving champion of the race? Can superspeedway racing ever be fixed? Was the first 400 miles all undone by the chaos that was the final 40 laps?
Personally, I was extremely disappointed. The day has been built upon for months. The prerace festivities, even watching from home, is one of the best environments of any sporting event during the whole year. Fox did a wonderful job covering all angles of both the Great American Race and storylines of the impending season.
Captain America, portrayed by Anthony Mackie, gave the prerace commands for the drivers to start their engines. President Trump arrived, spoke to the field of 41 via radio, and then led the field to the green flag. The day seemed to have great momentum in front of the entire country.
Unfortunately, the rain came. Teams and fans were both expecting this to happen, but still let down nonetheless. Fox stayed live on-air for nearly two and a half hours interviewing different drivers and other personalities around the sport. It felt rather nostalgic back to the early 2000s when the major networks filled time by putting the faces of the sport on TV, instead of showing the race from the year before.
After the three-hour red flag for rain, the cars returned to the track, but only to run caution laps for about 20 minutes and come back down pit road. Another smaller cell of rain came through, and then the 67th Running of the Daytona 500 was finally ready to roll.
The racing was phenomenal through stages one and two. Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney split stage wins, while the front of the field showed flexed their muscles. The best superspeedway racers in the sport right now were all at the front. Logano, Keselowski, Wallace, Blaney, and Elliot were schooling the rest of the field. Just like other tracks, Daytona was proving that it was just not based on luck: skill was still much of a factor on who ran where.
Stage three began and ran much like the previous two had. However, the first “big one” came with under 20 to go and ruined most of the best cars. Joey Logano, with Noah Gragson attached to his bumper, was trying to squeeze in between Kyle Busch and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. After two successful blocks, Stenhouse Jr. threw an unsuccessful block and all you know what broke loose.
After the first wreck fest unraveled, the second “big one” arrived with five to go. Cole Custer was being very aggressive pushing Christopher Bell on the top line, but Bell’s Toyota could not take the hits from Custer’s Mustang. Bell ended up in the wall, and Ryan Preece’s Mustang took flight into turn three. His #60 Ford looked more like an airplane taking off instead of a race car. Thankfully, everyone was checked and released from the in-field care center.
Then, the final accident of the night came halfway down the backstretch on the final lap. Cole Custer tried to block Chase Briscoe and wrecked the top four cars, including Denny Hamlin who was running first. William Byron, who had been a non-factor all night long, escaped the through the carnage and got the checkered flag.
Even though Byron’s Chevrolet was nowhere near the best car, he did something that you have to do at Daytona: stay out of trouble. Willy B was just one of six cars that was not involved in an accident during the Daytona 500 and brought home his second Harvey J. Earl trophy.
Usually in NASCAR, the driver who wins the race runs towards the front of the field and is one of the fastest cars. However, at Daytona, this is hardly ever the case. William Byron has displayed this now in back-to-back years. How does NASCAR fix their epidemic of late race wrecks at superspeedways?
They can’t. This is how it is at these places. Unfortunately, in our biggest race on the calendar, it is all about luck and attrition, but not about skill. This is backwards compared to every other Major League sport in the entire world. However, many may argue that is why they love the Daytona 500.
I do love the Daytona 500 and other superspeedway racing. I will always watch them because of the parity. However, it is just not good for NASCAR that the best cars are never around at the finale of these races. I’m not sure if they will or even can ever fix this, but it sure is disappointing that the postrace storyline for the biggest race on the calendar every year is how many cars did NOT finish the race.
