DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Usually in sports, when someone uses the word “laughter” to describe a contest, it means that one team dominated.
For the 2025 Daytona 500, it took on a different meaning, as William Byron went from seventh to first in the final two miles as the leaders crashed in front of him, and he slipped by on the outside.
Byron started the final lap in ninth.
“This win, it brought me to laughter,” Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle said. “Because I looked up and we’re getting ready to win, and it was just amazing.”
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Byron, who won NASCAR’s biggest race for the second consecutive year, got out of his car and was, frankly, a little perplexed.
“Crazy,” Byron said. “I can’t honestly believe that. But we’re here.”
There were plenty of others in the race who couldn’t believe what they saw or felt. And it had nothing to do with laughing.
Topping that list was Ryan Preece.
He flipped for the second time in the last four Daytona races after a crashing Christopher Bell slid into the side of Preece, launching him in the air. It was the worst wreck in a day filled with carnage, as the cars often accordion when the drivers are either not full throttle as they try to save fuel or then need to shove each other to gain spots in the aerodynamic draft.
“We keep beating on a door hoping for a different result,” Preece said about the flip. “And I think we know where there’s a problem at superspeedways. I don’t want to be the example of when it finally does get somebody, I don’t want it to be me.
“I’ve got a two-year-old daughter, and just like a lot of us, we have families. So something needs to be done because cars lifting off the ground like that. That felt worse than Daytona in ’23.”
Preece didn’t feel that type of contact should have caused his car to lift.
“With the hit like that, I don’t think it should have gone airborne,” he said. “I’m just not very happy. We had a really fast car, but you can only do so much when everybody stacks up.”
Bell appeared to get turned from contact with Cole Custer.
“Nobody did anything wrong,” Bell said. “You have to be pushing if you want to succeed, and it’s the name of the game. It’s the way it goes.
“I’m fine [physically]. I’m as beat down as you would be whenever you’re at the front of the Daytona 500 with five laps to go.”
That wreck came with four laps remaining. It was bookended by a Ricky Stenhouse Jr.-Joey Logano triggered crash that collected 14 drivers.
There was enough blame to go around, and Jeff Gordon put it squarely on Logano. When Byron was asked if any driver made dumb moves, Gordon interjected, saying, “Joey did,” on that particular one.
Logano: “It’s easiest to say, ‘Just don’t make the move,’ but not making the move doesn’t win the race either. Late in the race and a late block kind of got us all in trouble.”
Stenhouse: “I felt like maybe he was trying to fill the gap. And then him and somebody else got together and then hit me in the left rear.”
And then there was the crash on the final lap that took out Denny Hamlin — also from contact with Custer — with Byron running in seventh.
NASCAR Cup Series: 2025 Daytona 500 Highlights
Hamlin didn’t fault Custer, who returned to the Cup Series after two years in Xfinity, for trying to make the move, even though he felt it was the wrong one.
“It comes with experience. I don’t fault Cole going for it,” Hamlin said. “He’s back in the Cup Series. He’s got a good opportunity to come out here and lock himself in the playoffs. … He’s going to do everything he can to make a move that he thinks is the race-winning move.
“I said to him from my experience, you have to get off of [Turn] 4 first.”
Custer said he would have to look at replays to know what happened.
“This is the biggest race of our lives, the top of our sport, and it’s a life-changing race,” Custer said. “You’re just going for it all.”
Can that be the excuse? And if so, then Byron probably deserves credit for being one of six drivers (out of 41 in the race) not involved in an accident.
“These cars don’t push and receive pushes very easily,” Byron said. “It looks like it’s in control, but the car has a lot of drag. So when you come off the corner, it’s easy to get to somebody’s bumper. But the cars don’t get pushed easily. You have your hands full the whole straightaway.
“I feel like what created the ending … was a lot of lane swapping [to try to block or get runs]. And anytime you had that amount of lane swapping, you had a lot of runs come from behind.”
So how did Byron feel?
He said Cup drivers are so talented, he wouldn’t consider any win a fluke.
“I didn’t know how to feel after we took the checkered,” Byron said. “Last year was a little bit — it was definitely easier to understand the emotions. But this year was different.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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