Recent years have given us a mixed bag when it comes to NASCAR’s premier event. The race has been marred by stale action on some occasions and by heart-stopping accidents on others, causing the prestigious Daytona 500 to lose some of its luster for many fans.
This year, though, auto-racing followers were treated to a thriller from start to finish.
The race saw several late caution flags for crashes, including the one that ended it on the final lap just as Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. had passed Joey Logano for the lead. But that shouldn’t take away from what was one of the most competitive Daytona 500s of all time.
There were 52 lead changes in this year’s edition of the Great American Race, tying it for second all-time in that regard. Only 2011 saw more.
More importantly, the racing throughout all 212 laps was hardly ever dull. Often times on NASCAR’s superspeedway tracks, drivers will spend long portions of the race riding in single-file formation as they wait for the right time to make a move. That seldom happened on Sunday.
Making this more impressive is that until the closing stages, we saw such action without the race devolving into a demolition derby. Drivers were able to race their way to the front, rather than have track position fall into their laps through attrition.
Stenhouse, who won his third career Cup Series event — all on superspeedways — drove a smart, methodical race. He rode in the middle of the pack for much of the afternoon and didn’t take the lead until making.
Dissenters of NASCAR’s most chaotic type of racing will often claim that it now takes far more luck than skill to win the Daytona 500. In some years, they probably have a point.
However, this was not one of them. After several years of letdowns, the 2023 version of the Daytona 500 was a step in the right direction in bringing the race back to its legendary status.
