DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR’s playoff system is designed to give a long shot a chance to race for the Cup Series championship.
As a pack of underdogs hurtled toward the finish line at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night, there was a real possibility of an upset and someone racing his way into the postseason by winning the regular-season finale.
Then a favorite spoiled it all.
Ryan Blaney won a four-wide fight to take the checkered flag, a victory that denied a Cinderella moment and gave Alex Bowman of NASCAR titan Hendrick Motorsports the final spot in the playoffs.
Blaney was 13th with two laps to go, but the 2023 Cup Series champion muscled his Team Penske No. 12 Ford to the front and surged slightly ahead right before the finish line. He beat each of the other three cars in the front-running pack by less than a second: Daniel Suarez’s Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet by a margin of 0.031, Justin Haley’s Spire Motorsports’ Chevrolet by 0.036 and Cole Custer’s Haas Factory Team Ford by 0.049.
Legacy Motor Club’s Erik Jones was fifth in the highest finish for a Toyota driver Saturday, with Kyle Larson sixth in a Hendrick Chevy, Chris Buescher seventh in an RFK Racing Ford and Ty Gibbs eighth in a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Any of the first seven drivers behind Blaney besides Larson would have been first-time winners this season and clinched the final spot in the 16-driver field for the playoffs.
Blaney, locked into the field via his victory two months ago at Nashville Superspeedway, denied them all.
His victory assured Bowman, who crashed early in the race and had to watch for more than three hours on TV to learn his fate, would get a chance to race for the championship this season and that all four Hendrick entries would be in the playoffs.
The first 19 cars across the finish line were all within a half-second of Blaney, who wound up second in the regular-season standings. Hendrick’s William Byron, who opened the season on this same track with his second straight Daytona 500 victory, had already wrapped up the regular-season title.
“What a wild couple last laps,” said Blaney, who waited until the end to aggressively move through traffic. “It’s definitely not as traditional a way as we like to run them, we like to lead laps and things like that. We just couldn’t really get there until the last second.”
Suarez is running out the final months of his contract at Trackhouse after five seasons — a parting of driver and team was announced earlier this summer, and Saturday afternoon brought the announcement that Connor Zilisch would replace him — and he was disappointed not to make the playoffs.
“All in all, a good car. Just not enough and a little too late,” Suarez said.
Haley, who is likely to be replaced at Spire at the end of the year, also was frustrated. Haley and Spire’s only Cup Series win came in Daytona’s summer race in 2019, when it was shortened by rain while he was the leader.
“It hurts, especially with the year the 7 car has had. We obviously had a rough season,” Haley said. “You’re counting them down and just trying to play everything out. It stings, but still a good night.”
Buescher said coming up short of the playoffs would force him to “just be mad about it for a while.”
“Not trying to pout, just I’m proud of this team,” he added. “It was a great night. We certainly had a shot and had the speed again, so want to be excited about that, and I am, but man, it’s just another one of those we had the ability to win this race, had the speed, had the handling, and no champagne to celebrate.”
The victory was on brand for Team Penske, winner of the past three Cup Series championships. Last season, Joey Logano won his second title in three years and third overall.
The team’s title streak has been built on overcoming summer slumps and then turning it up when the playoffs begin. Blaney’s win snapped an 11-race losing streak in the Cup Series for both Penske and Ford.
Team owner Roger Penske, who was in victory lane to celebrate Saturday, has all three of his drivers in the playoff field as Blaney and Logano are joined by Austin Cindric.
Meanwhile, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick crashed early in the race and still clinched a spot in the playoffs.
How? Just nine laps later, Bowman wrecked as well, and with him out of the race, it automatically locked Reddick into the 16-driver field.
Reddick, who was the 2024 regular-season champ, and Bowman, who has missed the playoffs just once in his nine seasons at Hendrick, both started the race trying to earn the final two spots in the playoffs. Reddick held a 29-point cushion over Bowman, but when he wrecked after 18 laps, he suddenly became in danger of missing out on the postseason altogether just nine months after he was one of the four drivers eligible for the title in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway.
His worries went away on the 27th lap, when Bowman was collected in a multicar crash that ended his race.
“There’s just nothing you can do, welcome to superspeedway racing,” Bowman said soon after the collision. “We feel like it was out of our control, and it is what it is. I am going to sit in front of a TV and watch. Unfortunately we are on the sidelines watching, and we’re going to find out here in a couple of hours.”
Reddick was pleased to make the playoffs but was frustrated it has been so difficult.
“Really disappointing for the experience I have to find myself in that position. As a driver you never want to make a mistake like that that early,” he said. “I hate that it came to that, but yeah, we at least made it.”
The complete 16-driver field for the postseason, with playoff points in parentheses: Larson (2,032), Byron (2,032), Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin (2,029), Blaney (2,026), JGR’s Christopher Bell (2,023), Trackhouse Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen (2,022), Hendrick’s Chase Elliott (2,013), JGR’s Chase Briscoe (2,010), 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace (2,008), Cindric (2,008), Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain (2,007), Logano (2,007), Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry (2,006), Reddick (2,006), Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon (2,005) and Bowman (2,002).
Chevy has seven playoff entries, Toyota has five and Ford has four.
The 10-race playoffs open next Sunday with the Southern 500 at South Carolina’s Darlington Raceway, the start of a three-race first round that will end with four drivers eliminated from title contention. A win advances a driver to the next round, with points determining which four drivers are ousted from those without a victory in the round.
The Southern 500 was the regular-season finale in 2024 and won by Briscoe, who used the crown-jewel victory to earn the final spot in the playoffs.