Few sporting venues have the mystique of the Daytona International Speedway.
Since 1959, the 2.5-mile track has served as home of NASCAR’s most prestigious race, the Daytona 500 — the first race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule (Sunday, 2:30 p.m. ET, Fox). The “Great American Race” is consistently NASCAR’s top TV draw (h/t: Front Office Sports), perhaps because the inherently chaotic nature of the racing mean fate and chance often have more to do with determining a victor than the skills of a driver and his crew.
Drivers, of course, must be at least a little lucky to win any auto race. But factors they and their crews can’t control at Daytona make for what ARCA Menards Series driver Ryan Roulette described as “a game of chess” at 200 miles per hour. Seemingly mundane events during a race — a piece of debris in the wrong spot on a track, a wayward seagull striking a car or a bump draft gone wrong — can determine the outcome of the Daytona 500.
Drivers and crew chiefs often fret over how little they control during a race at Daytona. The biggest culprits are the unforgiving, snarling packs created by drafting and violent, vicious “Big Ones” — auto racing parlance for wrecks involving 10 or more cars.
Daytona is not unique for its pack racing. It’s not unique for crashes, either. However, the venue’s narrow racing surface — 40 feet compared to Talladega’s 48 — makes it much harder for drivers to avoid crashes often triggered by the 20-plus car packs.
In recent years, the “Big Ones” have only increased in scale. In 2024, contact from William Byron, who won the race, sent Brad Keselowski around in front of the entire field. The crash involved more than a dozen drivers, many of whom were left with nowhere to go as the wreck played out in front of them.
The “Big One” in the 2024 Daytona was caused by a chain reaction that started with a poor bump draft, a move that can win races if done correctly and dash dreams if done poorly.
Bump drafting with a fellow driver in the wrong spot on the track — in a corner, for example — could be the difference in whether or not a car comes back to the pits in one piece.
