Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the Daytona 500 on Sunday to kick off the 2023 NASCAR season.
Stenhouse held off Joey Logano on the final lap of overtime when a crash involving Kyle Larson and several other drivers caused the caution flag to go out. Once the caution came out, Stenhouse was determined to be the lead, and Logano finished in second place.
Stenhouse is the 42nd different driver to win “The Great American Race.”
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“They left me a note in the car saying they believed in me and to get the job done tonight,” he told FOX Sports’ Jamie Little of his team. “I made some mistakes. We were able to fight back. This Kroger Cottonelle crew worked very, very hard this offseason.”
Christopher Bell, Chris Buescher and Alex Bowman rounded out the top five. AJ Allmendinger, Daniel Suarez, Ryan Blaney, Ross Chastain and Riley Herbst rounded out the top 10.
Brad Keselowski scored the Stage 1 win when fending off a charging Ryan Preece, and Chastain narrowly edged polesitter Bowman for the Stage 2 win.
Late warnings impacted the field with less than 20 laps to go.
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Preece, Michael McDowell, Martin Truex Jr., Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs, and Jimmie Johnson were all caught up in a wreck on lap 182. Harrison Burton restarted in the lead, but quickly lost it when Logano got a big push. Allmendinger and Kyle Larson took the lead again.
Kyle Busch might have gotten the win if it wasn’t for Suárez’s blown tire. Busch even pointed out that if it had been in 1998, when Dale Earnhardt won the race under caution, he would have been declared the winner.
Busch, Austin Dillon and William Byron would all go down as the Chevys made the effort in overtime. A crash involving Dillon and Byron took out a handful of riders, and on the final lap, Larson was caught up in a race-ending crash of his own.
Harvick, who announced that he would retire at the end of the season, led for most of the race until he was involved in a late crash. He finished at 11.
Travis Pastrana had an impressive performance finishing 14th.
Stenhouse is the sole driver for JTG Daugherty Racing, partly owned by former NBA star Brad Daugherty. He hasn’t made the top 10 in any Daytona 500 finish before Sunday’s victory since 2014.
His last win was in 2017. He finished 13th in the NASCAR standings that year.
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For now, Stenhouse has a berth in the NASCAR Playoffs. A second win this season will definitely help that.