Austin Dillon takes final playoff spot with chaotic Daytona win

The Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway was always bound to be a wild conclusion to the NASCAR Cup Series regular season, but Sunday’s race really took things to another level. While not the late-night overtime wreckfest of the Xfinity Series race on Friday, the 400 was postponed to Sunday due to weather, saw multiple crashes highlighted by a thirteen-car pile-up with twenty laps remaining that eliminated much of the field, an hours-long rain delay, and a dash to the finish that propelled Austin Dillon into the sixteenth and final playoff slot over Martin Truex Jr. despite the latter’s sixth-place points standing.

Dillon was nineteenth in the standings entering Daytona and therefore needed a win to qualify for the playoffs, and two slots were still available after Kurt Busch withdrew his playoff waiver. Ryan Blaney, third despite being winless, was virtually assured a playoff spot provided he did not crash out; incidentally, he was involved in the first accident of the race on lap 32, and spent the rest of the day salvaging a finish of fifteenth, six laps down. Despite the day and Truex finishing eighth, Dillon’s win and Blaney’s points advantage were enough for the latter to clinch.

“Honestly, it’s been a good year for us, but the wins haven’t come,” commented Blaney. “I feel like we can be a big threat in the playoffs, it’s just a matter of putting races together. It’s been a good year, but a great year would be wins and I feel like this team can do it if we just continue to do what we know and we improve on the things that we can get better at.”

Truex, who got caught in a lap 126 crash, will miss the playoffs for the first time since the inaugural year of the format in 2014. 

“We just had too much damage at the end,” he explained. “We had a good spot on the restart and we got a good restart. We got the #2 (Austin Cindric) up front, which is what we were trying to do, but just couldn’t keep up. Just too much damage. It’s a shame. We knew it was going to be tough with so many cars out of the race and the distance between me and the #12 (Blaney). It was going to be hard to hang on to fourth or better with a car that torn up.”

The stage was set for Dillon and Blaney’s ticket punches when many of the leaders were taken out in a crash with twenty laps to go in turn one. The wreck was triggered by rain that some drivers began reporting long before the field reached the corner, but NASCAR elected to stay green until the wet surface on the high Daytona banking led to hell breaking loose.

As every lane collapsed into carnage, Dillon was able to slip by and take the lead as only a small handful of drivers who got away without much damage. When the race was resumed following a three-hour rain delay, only ten cars remained on the lead lap. The remaining sixteen laps were a battle of Austins as Dillon and Cindric, both Daytona 500 winners, drafted with their respective lines. Aided by Richard Childress Racing team-mate Tyler Reddick, Dillon reached Cindric’s rear bumper and got by him with three circuits left, and despite last-lap attempts by Cindric and underdogs Cody Ware and Landon Cassill, the RCR duo completed the 1–2 finish.

Dillon’s last win, at Texas in 2020, also saw him and Reddick occupy the top two spots. He is also the first RCR driver to win the Daytona summer race since Kevin Harvick in 2010.

“When I saw Tyler got there and they were all splitting up, I was like, ‘Man, I can’t let them go too big of a run,'” Dillon recalled in his post-race press conference. “I knew Tyler would have my back. He has been a good team-mate to me, and I enjoyed working with him.

“Hit the brake pedal. He got on my back bumper and from then on it was managing the gap to him in my mirror. We were able to bring it home.”

The calamity and swath of frontrunner retirements led to many surprising faces scoring strong finishes, which led to all thirty-six chartered teams finally securing at least one top ten in 2022. Ware notched his first top ten in sixth while Rick Ware Racing partner David Ragan was ninth, the latter of which enabled him to become the eleventh active Cup driver to finish in all forty positions of a race order at least once in their career.

“I think the big thing was just perseverance,” Ware stated. “There was a lot of attrition in this race and we made sure to be cautiously aggressive in the first part of this race, so to walk away from it and get the chance to race with the leaders and battle all the way up to third and try to fight for the win was really an awesome day.  I think this will give us a lot of positive energy and momentum heading into Darlington next weekend, another track where we’ve had some success this year already, so being sixth is a good day. I wish we could have got more. I think it just shows how good of a day we had and I’m definitely going to go to sleep tonight happy.”

Cassill settled for fourth, his first top five since placing in the same position at the 2014 fall Talladega race ahead of Noah Gragson, who scores Beard Motorsports‘ maiden top five. while B.J. McLeod enjoyed a career-best seventh.

McLeod described the race as a “crazy day but it was fun executing our plan and getting it to work in our favour because we’ve been doing this a lot, but it’s still hard to pull off. We’ve had small wrecks in the back take us out.  There’s really no safe spot, other than the front row or really conservative, and today we were able to put it all together and not lose a lap under that first green-flag stop and just made things work. There at the end, we had a couple cars behind us to help; (Joey) Logano helped us for a second and when they were helping me, I had a shot, but coming to three and four on the last lap I tried to get the right of the #62 (Gragson) and it stalled out a little bit and the #62 pulled up. When he pulled up, I had to wait until he went back down to even try to get another run and it was just too late. Still, an awesome day for a small team.

“I’m always thankful and always driven, but this series is tough. It can beat you up running every week and having an average of thirty-fourth-place speed in a series that rightfully so we’re still good, it’s just we’re thirty-fourth. There are thirty-three other better people out there. It gets hard and these finishes, like today we did earn it. It’s a superspeedway and, yes, we’ve got to work on our team a lot to be competitive at mile-and-a-half tracks and short tracks, but right now, we raced today, we put a plan together as a team, we built a car together as a team, and we come here and we got a top-ten finish. That’s what is so big for my guys because we’re away from people a lot and on the road a lot and it just means a lot to get them a good finish.”

Race results

Finish	Start	Number	Driver	Team	Manufacturer	Laps	Status
1	21	3	Austin Dillon	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	160	Running
2	6	8	Tyler Reddick	Richard Childress Racing	Chevrolet	160	Running
3	14	2	Austin Cindric	Team Penske	Ford	160	Running
4	35	77	Landon Cassill*	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	160	Running
5	37	62	Noah Gragson*	Beard Motorsports	Chevrolet	160	Running
6	33	51	Cody Ware	Rick Ware Racing	Ford	160	Running
7	36	78	B.J. McLeod*	Live Fast Motorsports	Ford	160	Running
8	13	19	Martin Truex Jr.	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	160	Running
9	34	15	David Ragan	Rick Ware Racing	Ford	160	Running
10	22	18	Kyle Busch	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	160	Running
11	30	23	Bubba Wallace	23XI Racing	Toyota	159	Running
12	3	22	Joey Logano	Team Penske	Ford	158	Running
13	23	45	Ty Gibbs*	23XI Racing	Toyota	158	Running
14	10	48	Alex Bowman	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	156	Running
15	16	12	Ryan Blaney	Team Penske	Ford	154	Running
16	15	41	Cole Custer	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	153	Running
17	11	43	Erik Jones	Petty GMS Motorsports	Chevrolet	148	DVP
18	25	42	Ty Dillon	Petty GMS Motorsports	Chevrolet	144	Accident
19	29	21	Harrison Burton	Wood Brothers Racing	Ford	140	DVP
20	7	4	Kevin Harvick	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	139	Accident
21	27	10	Aric Amirola	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	138	Accident
22	20	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	JTG Daugherty Racing	Chevrolet	138	Accident
23	32	38	Todd Gilliland	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	138	Accident
24	4	99	Daniel Suárez	Trackhouse Racing Team	Chevrolet	137	Accident
25	19	11	Denny Hamlin	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	137	Accident
26	28	16	Daniel Hemric*	Kaulig Racing	Chevrolet	137	Accident
27	8	17	Chris Buescher	RFK Racing	Ford	137	Accident
28	18	31	Justin Haley	Kaulig Racing	Chevrolet	137	Accident
29	2	9	Chase Elliott	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	137	Accident
30	31	7	Corey LaJoie	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	137	Running
31	26	14	Chase Briscoe	Stewart-Haas Racing	Ford	124	Accident
32	9	34	Michael McDowell	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	101	Accident
33	12	1	Ross Chastain	Trackhouse Racing Team	Chevrolet	101	Accident
34	17	24	William Byron	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	101	Accident
35	24	6	Brad Keselowski	RFK Racing	Ford	31	DVP
36	5	20	Christopher Bell	Joe Gibbs Racing	Toyota	30	Accident
37	1	5	Kyle Larson	Hendrick Motorsports	Chevrolet	14	Engine

Bold – Currently in playoffs
Italics – Competing for Rookie of the Year
* – Ineligible for points