DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. did the improbable.
The 47 car was the one in front when the caution after the white flag had already come out. He ended up edging Joey Logano for the win.
This is his third career NASCAR Cup Series win, and his first Daytona 500.
It ultimately came down to the third overtime restart — where the JTG Daugherty driver started in the lead and held off the rest of the field.
Daytona International Speedway was also the site of his last win: the summer race back in 2017.
There was a ton of drama in the final stage and overtime. But the first two stages displayed clean, competitive racing. Among the memorable moments: There was the Stage 1 instance where Riley Herbst spun out heading into pit road. There was the incident a few laps later, when a Martin Truex Jr. draft-bump lightly nudged Bubba Wallace into the fence.
In Stage 2, there was the Tyler Reddick spin, which saw the 45 car get loose before slamming into the wall and making contact with a bunch of other cars. That run ended the days for Reddick, Erik Jones and Chase Elliott — and it also inflicted substantial damage on Ryan Blaney’s 12 car. (The hit didn’t immediately end Blaney’s day, but it effectively knocked him out of the chase for a Daytona 500 win that has so long eluded him.)
And then in Stage 3, with about 15 laps to go, there was a Michael McDowell spin-out that knocked out Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece and badly damaged the cars commanded by Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr.
But then came the end of Stage 3, where Stenhouse made it happen.
