DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Big wrecks are common at Daytona International Speedway. It’s part of the thrill of superspeedway racing. Avoiding the pileups can be a skill. Sometimes, it boils down to being in the right place at the right time.
With five laps remaining in regulation of Sunday’s 67th annual Daytona 500, Tyler Reddick’s odds of contending for the victory were slim to none. He was running 25th as the field clicked laps off. But Christopher Bell got turned sideways on the backstretch, with Ryan Preece getting the brunt end of the wreck, barrel rolling into Turn 3.
Reddick snuck through the wreck and moved up to 20th. With numerous drivers needing to pit to repair damage, he began the overtime restart in 15th. At the white flag, the No. 45 Toyota moved up two spots to 13th.
Then, all hell broke loose.
On the final lap, Chase Briscoe and Cole Custer made contact, clipping race leader Denny Hamlin in the right rear and turning the No. 11 car into oncoming traffic. William Byron, who took the white flag in ninth position, snuck by the chaos to grab the lead. Reddick was pinched into the outside wall, brushing the side of his No. 45 car. Yet he remained in a battle to the finish against Byron, with NASCAR officials allowing the race to finish under the green flag.
Byron hoisted his second consecutive Harley J. Earl Trophy. Reddick finished .113 seconds behind, matching his best career finish at Daytona (August, 2022).
“I was just hoping [Hamlin] wasn’t going to clip me,” Reddick said of his last-lap heroics. “I was going to have a run on [Byron]. It was going to be a race to the finish. Unfortunately, that didn’t come to reality. Got in the wall, scrubbed my speed and didn’t have any momentum left for [Byron].”
Starting the “Great American Race” in 11th position, Reddick moved up three spots by the end of the opening stage to tally three points. He sank down the leaderboard in Stage 2, falling to 30th.
Because the No. 45 car wasn’t a real factor for the duration of the 502.5-mile event (201 laps), Reddick wasn’t playing the what-if game after the race. He will settle for a runner-up finish and move on to Atlanta Motor Speedway, another drafting-style venue.
“If we were up there controlling that race and lost it at the end, it would sting a lot more,” Reddick noted. “We basically got two major breaks and snuck through two big stackups. Without those, we finish somewhere around 20th.”
Reddick doesn’t boil his near miss down to what could have been in the final laps, rather where he was running for a chunk of the final stage.
“You would have to go back 60 laps, just decisions made leading up to that final stretch – not really in the closing laps,” he stated. “We got the most out of it that we could.”
Reddick shattered his best result in the Daytona 500, which was a disheartening 27th in six previous bids. He bettered his average finish, as he entered the race with a 30.8 result in the prestigious event.