Tyler Reddick – Daytona International Speedway Photo
NASCAR Wire Reports – DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Tyler Reddick waited for the last possible moment to make his move – and it paid off with victory in Sunday’s 68th running of the Daytona 500.
In the final 500 yards of the “Great American Race,” Reddick got a welcome push from teammate Riley Herbst, muscled his way past Chase Elliott and powered his No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota toward the finish line.
As the track exploded in chaos behind him, when Herbst tried an ill-fated late block on Brad Keselowski and a knot of cars slid sideways across the finish line, Reddick already was celebrating a 0.308-second victory over 2023 Daytona 500 winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Reddick was the 25th different leader — a record for the race — and the only lap he led was the last one. Michael Jordan on Daytona triumph: ‘Feels like I won a championship’. After a winless 2025, his last three wins came in 2024, Reddick expressed both satisfaction and relief at doing what 23XI co-owners Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan hired him to do.
“Last year was really hard for all of us, hard for me,” Reddick said. “When you’re a Cup driver and you get to this level and drive for Michael Jordan, it’s expected you win every single year.
“For us to go on that drought, it made us look hard in the mirror, and I am really proud of everyone on our Chumba Casino Toyota Camry. Worked really hard in the offseason, and there were many points in this race where we weren’t making decisions we wanted to, but we just reset, and every opportunity we got to reset, we went back at it.
“Just speechless. I didn’t know if I’d ever win this race. It’s surreal, honestly. The best part is my son (Beau) asked before this race, ‘Are you finally going to win this race?’ Something about today just felt right.”
The final two laps produced more plot twists than a dime novel. Spire Motorsports driver Carson Hocevar led at the white flag but spun in Turn 1 and fell out of the lead pack, taking Erik Jones and Michael McDowell with him. Elliott took control and appeared ready to win his first Crown Jewel race before Reddick gained momentum off Herbst’s bumper.
Moments later, Herbst’s attempted block stopped Keselowski’s huge run near the outside wall and sealed the win for Reddick.
“I’m not really sure what happened with the first (Hocevar) wreck,” Elliott said. “But we ended up kind of getting gifted the lead, and the 38 (Zane Smith) and I had got out by ourselves down the back. He had given me a good shove off into (Turn) 3 and then it was kind of just he and I, and at that point I just felt momentum shift, like there was going to be another run coming behind us there at some point.
“Unfortunately, that was accurate, and then at that point in time, you’re just on defense. Man, that’s a really, really tough place to be, truthfully. Obviously looking back, you can run it through your mind a thousand times. Do you do something different? I feel like if I had thrown a double block on the 45 (Reddick), probably would have just crashed us at that point in time.”
Behind Stenhouse, 2015 Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano slid across the finish line in third place, followed by Elliott and Keselowski.
“Yeah, a lot of chaos,” said Keselowski, who raced while still recovering from a broken right femur. “Last restart I gave William Byron a great push and just wasn’t enough to move our lane. I was giving him all I had, and then right here at the end I had this huge run and the 35 (Herbst) wrecked us. Really disappointed.
“Tore up the 9 (Elliott), tore up the 22 (Joey Logano), a bunch of cars that didn’t deserve to be wrecked, so that was a big bummer and really stupid. Still a decent day for us to come home with a top five and to be competitive and have a shot to win.”
As wild as the finish was, the biggest melee of the afternoon came much earlier.
With seven laps left in the second stage, contact between the No. 40 Chevrolet of Justin Allgaier and the No. 11 Toyota of three-time Daytona 500 winner Hamlin ignited a 20-car wreck in the tri-oval.
Allgaier was leading the top line but left a narrow lane open to his right. As Hamlin attempted to fill the hole, Allgaier’s car twitched toward the wall, turned across the nose of Hamlin’s Camry and lit the fuse of chaos behind him.
“I got to the outside lane there, got to the front – got the outside lane,” Allgaier said. “And I really thought I had blocked enough of that top lane that the top line was just going to fall in behind.
“And as soon as Denny went to that quarter-panel, it just sucked me in there. It’s a hundred percent my fault. That’s the frustrating part. I should have moved it up higher. But there are moments where you get a little bit complacent. You think you did everything right, but you didn’t check all the boxes. That’s what happened there.”
Even though Herbst was listed in that incident, his car was not severely damaged and survived to become a key component in the 23XI victory, as Jordan acknowledged after the race.
“I thought Riley did an unbelievable job pushing at the end,” Jordan said. “That shows you what teamwork can really, really do. He doesn’t get enough credit. He won’t get enough credit. But we feel the love. We understand exactly what he did.
“We hung in there all day. Great strategy by the team, and we gave ourselves a chance at the end. Look, I’m ecstatic. I don’t even know what to say. It feels like I won a championship, but until I get my ring, I won’t even know.”
Smith, Chris Buescher, Herbst, Josh Berry and Bubba Wallace finished sixth through 10th, respectively. Byron, trying for a third straight Daytona 500 win, came home 12th, and pole winner Kyle Busch was 15th.
The lead changed hands among the record 25 different drivers 65 times. Smith took the first stage win – the first of his career – and Wallace won the second under caution for the 20-car accident.
The Cup Series heads to Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway next Sunday for the Autotrader 400 (3 p.m. ET, FOX, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Note: Post-race inspection in the Cup Series garage concluded without issue, confirming Reddick as the Daytona 500 winner.