WE GOT THE BIG ONE.
The Daytona 500 was delayed to today after rain forced NASCAR to postpone their season opener.
And despite the day getting off to an odd start with two jet dryers colliding this morning as they were preparing the track, the race started off fairly uneventful after a crash on lap 5.
The first two stages were relatively uneventful after a caution just 5 laps into the race when John Hunter Nemechek turned into Harrison Burton and caused a hard crash.
From there, we had two incredible moves from Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney to win the first two stages. But aside from that, everybody was on their best behavior – until 10 laps to go.
With 30 cars bunched up into a pack, Ross Chastain was throwing blocks and holding off a hard-charging Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski when William Byron got into Keselowski and stacked up…well, pretty much the entire field.
The wreck took out defending champion Ryan Blaney, who took another hard hit after being forced to a backup car today following a wreck in the Bluegreen Vacation Duels last week.
Blaney seemed to get his wrist tangled up in his steering wheel as he was wrecking, and seemed to be grabbing it after the car came to a rest, but he told Fox Sports after the race that his wrist was fine so hopefully he didn’t suffer any injuries.
But at this point it’s probably easier to list the drivers who WEREN’T involved in the wreck:
- Ross Chastain, who was leading the race at the time
I’m pretty sure that’s it.
The race is currently under a red flag, so we’ll have to wait and see which cars are able to get back in the race. But man, there were a ton of good cars taken out in that one, including Logano and Keselowski, who looked dominant most of the race.
