DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – For every driver that wins the DAYTONA 500, there’s several more with near-miss stories and another year of waiting to try and break through.
Hendrick Motorsports tied the all-time record with its ninth DAYTONA 500 win last year as William Byron pulled into victory lane. As for Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman, they’re all gunning for a similar breakthrough this year.
The good news is that all three have shown plenty enough speed in superspeedway races to warrant such a win. And for Bowman, he needn’t look too far in the past.
He finished second to Byron in 2024 and was on the No. 24’s flank when the caution flag flew on the final lap with Byron being proclaimed a winner. And while being so tantalizingly close stung at the time, Bowman now looks at it with perspective.
“It’s kind one of those things where you can’t do anything about it situations and yeah, it was what it was,” Bowman said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t win, but at least a teammate won. (Finishing) 1-2 in the 500 is really cool for Hendrick Motorsports and hopefully this year we can be on the other side of it.”
Statistically speaking, Bowman has had plenty of speed at superspeedway tracks. Just at Daytona International Speedway alone, Bowman has six top-10 finishes in 17 races. His average start while at Hendrick Motorsports is an incredible 2.29 in the DAYTONA 500 with three pole awards.
"It'd be super cool, obviously, to win. The 500 is really special and important," Bowman summarized. So, yeah, hopefully we can make it happen. It's a tough race to win. We've been close now a couple of times. The last two years we've been really good there in the race. Excited to get back there."
Both Elliott and Larson have had close calls to and coincidentally enough, they came in the same year.
In 2017, both drivers had the lead inside of three laps to go. In fact, Elliott, then in just his second DAYTONA 500 start, led most of the stretch run inside the final 30 circuits but ran out of fuel with three laps to go. After Martin Truex Jr. seized the lead and subsequently also ran out of gas, Kyle Larson inherited the lead and led the field to the white flag. However, his gas tank ran dry too, allowing eventual-race-winner Kurt Busch to take the point.
For Larson, who is still seeking his first superspeedway win in the Cup Series, it remains a sliding door, one that could’ve changed how he’s perceived as a racer in the draft.
"I mean, I don't think about it a whole lot, but I feel like when the 500 comes up, it's like, 'Gosh, if I could just add a little more fuel.' I'd probably take all my terrible results I've had on superspeedways but have a DAYTONA 500 win back then, nobody would talk about how terrible I am on superspeedways," Larson grinned. "So, I wish I could have that back a little bit but I understand that speedway racing, anybody's got a shot, so I feel like I'll have more opportunities in the future and we've been close in other years. I just haven't quite been able to put it all together. I feel like our team, though, is really strong on superspeedways. I think we're up front, our average running position has to be in the top three, it just seems like that final 10% of the race or that final big wreck, I get collected in it. So, try to be a little bit further ahead and hopefully miss the wreck."
And for as much as Larson has accomplished in his racing career – from dirt track prowess, to winning the other three Cup Series crown jewels (Brickyard 400, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500), to starting the Indianapolis 500 last year – the DAYTONA 500 remains the most glaring box left to check.
"It would be amazing to get the DAYTONA 500 to kind of polish off the big ones, the prestigious ones," Larson said. "I recently moved to a new house and I've got a really nice trophy case and I've got all my big stock car wins in that case except for the DAYTONA 500. So, would love to just complete the trophy case for sure."
As for finding the space? "Uh, I can make room. For sure."
Elliott, meanwhile, has found success elsewhere with three wins on drafting tracks, two at Talladega Superspeedway and one at Atlanta Motor Speedway. But as far as the DAYTONA 500 is concerned, his name is a legacy, with his father Bill winning the Great American Race twice (1985, 1987). His qualifying lap in '87, one with an average speed of 210.364 miles per hour, remains a track record and helped necessitate the introduction of restrictor plates the following year.
But growing up in the sport, Chase Elliott has also seen his share of greats come and go without winning the Harley J. Earl trophy. And he understands that winning the DAYTONA 500 remains one of the most difficult challenges in all of auto sports, if for no other reason, the calamity that tends to rule NASCAR's opening points-paying race. Yet, that doesn't dampen his desire to break through.
"I think any driver wants to win all the big races on the schedule and Daytona's one of them and probably one of the hardest ones to win just because it's the one that you have the least amount of control over," Elliott said. "And I think that it has eluded some greats over the years because of that, and I think it's just such a unique thing and it's really hard to explain to people. Just it being such a massive race, but a lot of people can win. I think for me it's just kind of included in the bunch of crown jewel events on our schedule that I would love to have all of them, at least have a couple of them before I get done. Just to say you won those races would be really, really special, I think when you look back on it."