Daytona 500 Recap

Story posted February 23, 2022 in CommRadio, Sports by Ethan Ellis

The Great American race has come and gone, but not without a weekend that was one of the most exciting in recent memory. History was made as Austin Cindric became the first rookie declaring for points in the Cup series to win the Daytona 500. This win came in his first full-time season and just his eighth Cup series start.

Cindric, the 2020 Xfinity Series champion, took over for former Penske driver Brad Keselowski, who moved into a driver/owner role at RFK racing, but his path to victory was not an easy one.

Stage One:

The race started with Hendrick teammates Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman on the front row, not an uncommon sight in the Daytona 500 as Hendrick has swept the front row eight times in Daytona 500 history. Unsurprisingly, restrictor-plate ace and veteran driver Keselowski dominated the race early leading 23 of the 24 opening laps, showing off the speed that was seen from him all weekend.

They were able to make it 40 laps before the first caution was thrown for an accident involving Kaz Grala and Chase Briscoe.

Grala lost a tire which was not unexpected as loose wheels plagued many teams last weekend after the change to one lug nut on tires. Briscoe subsequently spun off of the bumper of Austin Cindric. Unfortunately, this was not the last tire issue as just a few laps later, JJ Yeley had a tire break to bring out caution number two on the day.

To end a stage that had already been chaotic enough, the big one happened. Harrison Burton was turned off of the bumper of Brad Keselowski and subsequently flipped and landed on his roof. Keselowski was lucky enough to emerge unscathed, something that couldn’t be said about Burton, Denny Hamlin, William Byron, Kyle Busch, Alex Bowman and Ross Chastain.

This caution ended stage one and Martin Truex Jr. was able to win the first stage of the year.

Stage Two:

After an eventful first stage, a sense of calmness came over the field.

Stage two saw mostly single file racing with the Fords of Penske and RFK dominating and leading the train. There were some brief periods of double file racing during the green flag pit stops that happened midway through the stage but other than that, the field played nice with each other.

This all, however, went out the window with a handful of laps left in the stage. Manufactures tried to hook up and start multiple lines to push each other to the lead but ultimately, Martin Truex Jr. would emerge with his second stage win of the day.

Final Stage:

Only a handful of laps into the final stage, the intensity picked back up as a three car crash involving Tyler Reddick, Martin Truex Jr. and Joey Logano.

The intensity was turned down after this crash, however, as the next caution didn’t come until the ten to go mark. During this time, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Bubba Wallace and Austin Cindric traded the lead multiple times.

With ten to go, the second big crash happened when Kevin Harvick was turned at the start/finish line. This caution turned red flag took out Harvick, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Todd Gilliland, Noah Gragson and Erik Jones.

With five to go, Keselowski turned Ricky Stenhouse Jr. while pushing him to the lead. After the race, Stenhouse had some harsh words for Keselowski, who arguably caused two of the day’s cautions.

With this late caution, the Daytona 500 went into overtime.

Cindric and Keselowski started on the front row with two to go, but Cindric was able to stay out front for the two laps with the help of teammate Ryan Blaney. Cindric was able to survive a last push from Wallace to win his first career Daytona Cup race.

This weekend, the Cup Series travels to Auto Club Speedway.


Ethan Ellis is a first-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email him at ece5133@psu.edu.