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William Byron Survives Wild Daytona 500 Finish

by Chuck Abrams
William Byron, driver of the #24 Axalta Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 celebrates his victory Monday, February 19, 2024, after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. This is the first Daytona 500 win for Byron. On its 40th Anniversary, Hendrick Motorsports gets its 9th Daytona 500 victory, tying Petty Motorsports for most all-time. (Photo by Chris Owens/HHP for Chevy Racing)

Welcome back to NASCAR 2024!

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 (Photo by Chris Owens/HHP for Chevy Racing)

A lot of prerace hype centered on the new bodies of the Ford and Toyota cars. One reason the changes were made was to help them on the superspeedways. In addition to that, Toyota also has more cars with Legacy MC switching from Chevy to Toyota.

Plus, Ford took the front row after all with Logano and McDowell.

Practice was all about teams with Toyota holding the first 8 positions and Ford the next 6. Not until Austin Dillon at 15th did we see Chevy.

But the Duels showed a little more diversity in manufacturers with Ford and Toyota holding 1o of the Top 12 positions and just with two bowties in the Top 10.

But there was still a race to be run.

The opening Stage was pretty tame after a Lap 6 wreck that collected Jimmie Johnson and others. Pit strategies were already starting to play out to get Stage points and after dominating the early part of the race, Ford was lucky to have Joey Logano as the lone Ford in 11th while Chase Elliott led Chevy to the top 6 positions.

Stage 2 followed suit with lots of two-wide racing that saw Ryan Blaney dump his teammate to grab Stage 2. While more respectable for Ford, the Stage ended with 3 Fords, 2 Toyotas and 5 Chevy’s.

Starting to see a pattern here?

Ford did leap back out to the front with Logano, Cindric, Brad Keselowski and Blaney showing the way but there was still a race to be run.

As one might expect, all the pushing and shoving ultimately wound up creating a wreck that took out a major section of the field. And this isn’t stupid racing by drivers in mid pack. This is stupid racing at the front causing a wreck that few can avoid being it happens at the front of the field that creates a red flag while NASCAR cleans up the mess.

Ultimately, it comes down to crazy time with just a few laps to go and we got to see stupid racing once again as drivers got shoved into places they shouldn’t be, and William Byron and Alex Bowman took Hendrick to a 1-2 finish just as the caution comes out for the final wreck of the day.

In all this mess, there were a few highlights…and lowlights.

Lowlights

  1. All the freaking commercials with Wendy’s taking the win for the longest and most irritating commercial while we watched racing going on “side by side”, so we didn’t “miss any racing.” I am done with the side-by-side crap when half the race seems to be side by side commercials. Keep my racing side by side, not the commercials.
  2. Joey Logano showed that Ford has some power to be dealt with but when you get wrecked out no one really remembers. Maybe they’ll get some redemption at Atlanta.
  3. Harrison Burton looked like he might have something to say in this race, but he got wrecked early by stupid racing move number one.
  4. Michael McDowell was on the front row abut after the first wreck he had all kinds of issues, and he was just making laps until the end.
  5. Brad Keselowski was making Dale Jr. look like a prophet until he got caught in a late wreck not of his making.
  6. Jimmie Johnson had nothing to do but ride around “gathering data” for his team once he got taken out in stupid wreck number one.

Highlights

  1. William Byron picking up where he left off last year and grabs the win for Hendrick on their 40th
  2. Corey Lajoie had a good race, stayed out of trouble and ended up tying his career best of 4
  3. Bubba Wallace came into the race saying he was going to enjoy more racing instead of wondering if he should be here. P5 was not a bad finish and he somehow deftly avoided accidents all around him.
  4. AJ Allmendinger was P6 and led 9 laps.
  5. John Hunter Nemecheck finished P7 and that wasn’t a fluke.

As they say, now we start the real racing season. There is a lot to still figure out with the new Ford and Toyota configurations so Atlanta should be a better gauge of where teams stand.  After that, it’s Las Vegas, Phoenix and Bristol so look for the points to start shaking up and we’ll see who is where after race 5 at Bristol.

Drive fast, turn left, and keep the shiny side up.


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