(Photo: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
By Aaron Bearden
After each NASCAR race weekend, Motorsports Beat will share a piece breaking down the stories and takeaways from the weekend. This is a report on Speedweeks from Daytona International Speedway.
NASCAR Cup Series
Who Won?
Michael McDowell, who snagged his first win in shocking fashion after dodging a late wreck.
Top Stories
McDowell’s Daytona Dream
It was another night for the underdogs at Daytona International Speedway.
Two decades ago Michael Waltrip took the checkered flag in the Great American Race to end a 462-race losing streak in the NASCAR Cup Series. It was a redemptive moment for the veteran, albeit one overshadowed by a terrible last lap crash.
As only racing can provide, a similar fairy tale story arose on Sunday night. Through a fiery, terrifying last-lap crash emerged Michael McDowell and Front Row Motorsports, with McDowell claiming his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in 358 career starts.
It came in typical Front Row style. The team’s first two wins arrived amid darkness (Talladega Superspeedway, 2013) and fog (Pocono Raceway, 2016). This one combined the two, coming in the early hours of Monday morning after a race stalled by rain and threatened by lingering fog throughout the race.
Typically one of the garage’s more stoic figures, McDowell burst out of his car smiling after a burnout on the front straightaway. He pounded the roof of his No. 34 Ford with happiness and gestured to the crowd.
“I just can’t believe it,” McDowell said afterward. “So many years just grinding it out, waiting for an opportunity like this. …
“I’m so thankful, such a great way to get a first victory. Daytona 500, are you kidding me?!”
The win came in similar fashion to FRM’s other triumphs. Without the top-end speed or elite resources to outright match their competitors, the group did what they could to put themselves in favorable positions.
In Talladega they’d used a teammate duo to team up on a diminished field as darkness approached. At Pocono staying out amid changing weather benefited them as the caution flew.
This time McDowell survived early carnage and placed himself up front among Ford’s biggest hitters entering the final lap.
He was the one pushing second place runner Brad Keselowski coming onto the backstretch on the last lap. Had Keselowski been able to pass his teammate Joey Logano, McDowell would have been in position to take a shot at the win off of Turn 4.
But he didn’t have to go that far. The pair crashed viciously into the outside wall, opening up the door for McDowell to score one of the great upsets in NASCAR history.
In one moment, the 34-year-old’s career has been changed.
Often overlooked as one of many drivers rushed into the Cup ranks in the 2000s, in his case with — fittingly — Michael Waltrip Racing, McDowell has lingered around the Cup garage for over a decade. He was primarily known for his horrifying qualifying crash at Texas Motor Speedway in 2008.
Each year McDowell had been one of the drivers lingering about in silly season. He didn’t manage to start all 36 races in a year until 2017, lost his Leavine Family Racing ride to Kasey Kahne in 2018 and found a new home at Front Row Motorsports where he quietly upped his performance in 2019 and 2020.
McDowell has flown under the radar for years, but now he’s been thrust into the spotlight as a Daytona 500 champion and a forthcoming playoff participant this fall.
How the rest of the season plays out from here remains to be seen. But for one long, foggy night in Daytona, McDowell is the sport’s shining star.
Late flames
Fans could be forgiven for not noticing McDowell had won the race in the immediate aftermath of the final lap on Monday morning. While he was storming through Turn 4 and on to victory, a fireball of wrecked cars and flying shrapnel was unraveling behind him.
After playing nice for most of the final stage, Team Penske teammates Keselowski and Logano were each in position to try to win on the final lap. Logano was leading, while Keselowski had shuffled out Kevin Harvick and taken second on the penultimate lap.
The combination was a threat from the start. Logano is one of the best blockers in NASCAR, Keselowski among the most aggressive attackers. Any hope for peace or special treatment among teammates was thrown out the door with the Daytona 500 on the line.
And so it came to be that the remaining field found themselves crashing in spectacular fashion on the last lap of the Daytona 500. Keselowski tried to get under Logano going into Turn 3, with McDowell pushing him. Between the three everything went wrong, with both Penske cars getting turned around and Keselowski sliding up the track.
From there it was pandemonium.
Another look at the big wreck on the last lap of the #DAYTONA500.
All drivers have climbed out of their cars. pic.twitter.com/UmRtWoJ5YA
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 15, 2021
Numerous drivers got included in the wreckage. Kyle Busch hit Keselowski hard, sending the 2012 Cup champ’s Ford briefly up into the catch fence before it returned to the racing surface. Ryan Preece and Ross Chastain crashed ahead of them. Austin Cindric, Bubba Wallace and Cole Custer piled in behind them.
The group briefly exploded into a fireball against the outside wall. Then came a slow, strained descent to a halt and the eerie silence that followed.
Thankfully all drivers involved were okay. Each was checked and released from the infield care center, left only to worry about what had gone wrong and kept them from victory lane.
Keselowski had few regrets for the moves he’d made in pursuit of his first Daytona 500 win.
“I had a big run down the backstretch and wanted to make the pass to win the Daytona 500 and it ended up really bad,” he said afterward. “ I don’t feel like I made a mistake, but I can’t drive everybody else’s car, so frustrating.”
Logano chose not to point fingers after the race, chocking the accident up to the usual hard racing that comes at drafting tracks.
“(Keselowski) kept trying to back up, trying to get a run,” he said. “I was trying to back up to him to keep the runs from being too big and just, I guess he got to the back of the 34 and it ended up being a really big run coming at me and it seemed like we all just collided in one spot.”
The 2015 Daytona 500 winner did share praise for McDowell, saying “I feel like we had a great shot being where we were and leading on the last lap, but if we couldn’t win I’m really happy to see McDowell win this thing. He’s a great guy, a great person, a good leader in life and has helped me a lot in my life, so it’s very cool to see him win the Daytona 500.”
Denny’s Disappointment
What could have been for Denny Hamlin.
The 2021 Speedweeks once seemed destined to play into the Virginian’s hands. He entered as a two-time defending champion of the Great American Race, out for a record third consecutive win. He had a fast No. 11 Toyota and a new drafting teammate in the 23XI Racing car he co-owned alongside Michael Jordan with Bubba Wallace behind the wheel.
Even the opening stages of Sunday’s race went Hamlin’s way. He led a race-high 98 laps out of the 200 ran, with a dominant car that seemed capable of maneuvering wherever he needed it to.
By all accounts, the race seemed to be Hamlin’s for the taking. But one pit road sequence changed everything.
In typical superspeedway fashion, the different manufacturers grouped their teams together and had them all pit together on the same lap. Ford and Chevrolet executed their stops with little issue, but Toyota struggled with lesser numbers and emerged from the pit lane well clear of each other.
That opened the door for everyone else to shuffle them back. Kyle Busch, Hamlin and Wallace each got sent deep into the remaining field. Wallace’s situation turned even worse, with a vibration sending him to pit road an extra time and trapping him a lap down.
Hamlin tried to split the pack up and sort himself into the middle of the group as they roared past him, but they all collectively trapped the Virginian on the inside lane and sent him to the back.
“We were too far out front,” he said. “We got on-and-off pit road too good. I was just too far ahead of the pack.”
He made a few positions up over the ensuing run. But when the race ran largely single-file and green until the final two laps, Hamlin was left too deep in the field without enough time to mount a charge.
The three-time Daytona 500 champion was able to dodge the last-lap melee. But he still found himself relegated to fifth when the checkered flag flew.
It was a frustrating end to what had been a magnificent Speedweeks for Hamlin, with perhaps his best car at Daytona falling short of victory lane.
“I couldn’t really do anything,” he said. “I hoped once I got to eighth as long as they make a move with two to go, I’m in the energy – in the area where I can make something happen.
“Dominant car, just a dominant car. Just one of those things that execute too good.”
The (First) Big One
The last-lap crash might have been the worst of this year’s Daytona 500. But to find the biggest, you have to look 185 laps — and about eight hours — earlier.
Eager to kick off a year that had been labeled the ‘Best Season Ever’ by FOX Sports, the NASCAR Cup Series field got straight to hard racing when the green flag flew on this year’s Great American Race.
For the first 13 laps, that provided nothing short of hard racing and entertainment.
Then, on Lap 14, chaos.
An errant push from Christopher Bell sent Aric Almirola around going into Turn 3, turning the Floridian up the track and into a line of oncoming cars. A massive pileup ensued, knocking multiple contenders out of the race.
Eliminated in the crash were drivers including Almirola, two-time runner up Ryan Blaney, pole sitter Alex Bowman, sentimental favorite Ryan Newman, Daniel Suarez, Matt DiBenedetto, Erik Jones, Anthony Alfredo and David Ragan.
Having been crashed in Turn 4 for the second time in four years, Almirola was left frustrated with how aggressive teams were being so early in the race.
“We were just getting pushed too hard too early. It’s a long, long race,” Almirola said. “Man, we were in a fine position, just sitting there riding around in the top two, three and (Bell) just came with a big run and hit me really hard in a bad spot.
“It turned me to the right and tore up our race car and ended our Daytona 500 way too early.”
That disappointment was matched by Ragan, who spent months building up to a one-off opportunity at Daytona as a retired full-time driver only to have his run dashed just as it was beginning.
“I’ve never met a driver that said, ‘Hey, I’m going to start this 500-mile race and just be super-aggressive.’ We all talk about give and take and making it to the end, but it seems nobody does that once they get out there,” Ragan said.
“It’s frustrating that everybody is pushing and shoving and I just saw (Bowman) get turned and whenever someone wrecks in the top five or six it tears up a lot of cars.”
The situation in Daytona took a turn worse from there. Lightning in the area forced the field to pit road for a red flag. Heavy rains followed, threatening to postpone the race until Monday morning.
By the time the field started rolling again in the evening, it was after 9 p.m. ET and only 29 cars remained to contest the final 185 laps.
That led to a pretty calm middle stage of the race, with drivers running single-file save for battles for stage wins. The racing didn’t ramp up to the same intensity level until the final two laps, when the final hard crash and an unexpected surprise winner capped off a finish that will linger in the memory for years to come.
Daytona 500 Results (Unofficial)
- Michael McDowell
- Chase Elliott
- Austin Dillon
- Kevin Harvick
- Denny Hamlin
- Ryan Preece
- Ross Chastain
- Jamie McMurray
- Corey LaJoie
- Kyle Larson
- Cole Custer
- Joey Logano
- Brad Keselowski
- Kyle Busch
- Austin Cindric
- Christopher Bell
- Bubba Wallace
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Chase Briscoe
- Joey Gase
- Cody Ware
- Kurt Busch
- BJ McLeod
- Josh Bilicki
- Martin Truex Jr.
- William Byron
- Tyler Reddick
- Kaz Grala
- Quin Houff
- Ryan Blaney
- Chris Buescher
- Anthony Alfredo
- Matt DiBenedetto
- Aric Almirola
- Alex Bowman
- Daniel Suarez
- David Ragan
- Ryan Newman
- Erik Jones
- Derrike Cope
