How the Daytona 500 Stopped Being About Raw Speed

Story byHow the Daytona 500 Stopped Being About Raw SpeedHow the Daytona 500 Stopped Being About Raw Speed Jonathan Bachman - Getty ImagesMike HembreeFri, February 13, 2026 at 3:39 AM UTC·5 min read

It’s quite likely that NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., while designing the Daytona International Speedway layout in the late 1950s in conjunction with Charles Moneypenny, envisioned a huge, fast track on which drivers would run at screaming speeds every lap, astonishing onlookers with mile-per-hour numbers unheard of in the world of stock car racing.

Flash forward to 2026, and France’s biggest race is almost 70 years old. The speeds remain staggering to the uninitiated. Drivers racing side by side at 200 miles per hour? Ridiculous. The speeds for the first 500 in 1959 were considerably slower at about 150 (the pole position average was 140), but still very much on the edge for that time period.

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France, who ultimately would build an even faster track at Talladega, Alabama, might be forgiven for believing that his Daytona showcase speedway would always be about the fastest of the fast, that the driver willing to run every lap to its rawest edge would be victorious.

Instead, racing at Daytona has evolved in sometimes quirky ways, and the victory often doesn’t go to the fastest, even as car styles have changed over the seasons.

“I feel like it’s a little harder to show your skills as a speedway racer with this car than what it used to be, and that’s just the way this car is,” Ryan Blaney said.

Sean Gardner - Getty Images

In the very early days, after drivers got over being astonished by this huge new landscape they were being asked to race around, the story was all about the draft. Junior Johnson, ever wily, and others discovered that locking two cars together front bumper to back bumper made both cars faster, and the modern era of high-speed stock car racing was born.

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Then along came the famous slingshot pass. For a time, the peculiarities of the draft made first place the last place a driver wanted to be on the last lap because the second-place driver could use the whip-around effect created by the slipstream to surge past and take the lead. This effect was profoundly illustrated in the 1974 summer race at Daytona when leader David Pearson slowed and dropped to the inside entering the final lap, effectively forcing second-place Richard Petty to pass him. Then Pearson perfectly executed the slingshot to win the race. Petty called the maneuver dangerous. Pearson said he simply was making the only move that would win the race.

David Pearson (No. 21) leads Richard Petty (No. 43) on his way to winning the Firecracker 400 at Daytona International Speedway in 1974. RacingOne - Getty Images

As speeds began to push the outer limits at Daytona and Talladega, NASCAR tried various methods, including engine restrictor plates and body modifications, in attempts to keep cars from taking flight and to calm insurance people who worried about cars visiting grandstands.

Teams responded to every change. For brief periods, Daytona saw tandem drafting, in which two cars ran linked together for lap after lap in a bizarre manifestation of “team” racing. And along came bump drafting, with drivers taking advantage of tight racing on the backstretch to bump the car in front and give it an extra boost. NASCAR eventually frowned on this tactic, especially when it was attempted in turns and led to crashes, and limited its scope.

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The latest iteration of Daytona racing is the concept of gathering in huge packs while also running at some fraction of full throttle, thus saving fuel and potentially limiting time on pit road for new fuel loads. This has created the perception that the “real” racing comes only near the end of 500 miles, and the statistical evidence tends to back up that idea.

William Byron, last year’s 500 winner, was running 15thwith 10 laps to go.

In the past nine 500s, the winner led only the final lap in three races.

There is the expectation that the pack racing will lead to crashes as tension mounts near the race finish. In 17 of the past 21 500s, the last green-flag stretch has been two laps or less. In only two of the past 21 events has the final green run been longer than six laps. Accidents have pushed six of the past eight 500s into overtime.

Crash at the 63rd Daytona 500 in 2021. Brian Lawdermilk - Getty Images

“Last year I thought for sure we were going to win it, just where we were and who we were racing and I was positioning ourselves and then you just crash,” three-time 500 winner Denny Hamlin said. “That’s just the Daytona 500 nowadays. Getting crashed is a large possibility. I don’t think I’ve finished well in the NextGen era here, but I’ve run well. I’ve been very unfortunate. I’m still trying to figure out how to finish these races without getting crashed in any way, shape or form.”

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It’s a jungle out there—at the end.

“The storm is brewing,” said 2015 500 winner Joey Logano. “You know it and you start to realize where you are and what can and can’t happen. The worst, honestly, is if you’re fourth row back, kind of locked in on the bottom maybe, and you realize that I’m probably not gonna win from where I’m at and I’m probably gonna crash. You start to realize that.

“You’re right in the middle of where the wreck is gonna happen. It’s gonna be right there. You may make it through. You may not, and the further back you are, the more likely you are to get into that crash, so that’s why everything before that you’re trying to position yourself to where you have options.”

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