Did You Notice? … How many people have the Daytona 500 slip through their grasp?
It’s often the case in superspeedway races, where the nature of the beast means most of the entire 40-car field has the ability to move out front with the right amount of drafting help.
This Daytona 500 was unique, though, in that there was no true dominant car throughout the afternoon. Pole-sitter Joey Logano led the most laps, with 45, but no one else led more than 25. Logano himself spent a large portion of the race cycled back in mid-pack. Winner William Byron led only four laps and didn’t get to the front until after the day’s big wreck on lap 193.
That leaves a lot of people sitting in the shop this week wondering what might have been. Among them …
Alex Bowman. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re telling Bowman to hold a meeting with Hendrick Motorsports and NASCAR officials because he is the rightful winner of this year’s 500. Here’s the clip that was circulating on X this week fans claim muddy the waters as to who the rightful winner was.
For those still holding out hope, there is none; this video is merely an optical illusion.
With that said, Bowman — gracious in defeat — has to be sitting there wondering. The difference between him pulling ahead of Byron was about another second or two. If only officials had hesitated just that much longer before pushing the button. Suddenly, a year in which Bowman missed multiple races, then the playoffs for a team whose expectations scream Championship 4 would be little more than a distant memory.
Byron’s 500 win will catapult him closer to superstardom, but one would argue that it’s Bowman who needed the win the most within HMS.
Brad Keselowski. Keselowski was making a move on the backstretch, under Ross Chastain, for the lead when Bowman’s No. 48 bumped the No. 24 of Byron the wrong way. He was in clear position to make the pass — Chastain said on the radio the RFK Racing No. 6 grazed his left rear on its way around — and was leading a train of fellow Ford drivers on the inside line.
Here’s another driver who took it all in stride, Keselowski recognizing he had put himself in position to win. The rest? At Daytona, it’s simply outside your control.
Make no mistake, a win for arguably the best superspeedway racer without a Daytona 500 would have been monumental. Instead, Keselowski’s now 0-for-15 in this race while his personal winless…
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