DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – A major crash ended stage one of Sunday’s Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway.
William Byron, Harrison Burton and Kyle Busch were among those involved in a big crash on the backstretch on lap 63. It started when Brad Keselowski tagged Burton coming out of turn two, sending Burton’s Ford into Byron’s Chevrolet.
Byron hit the infield SAFER barrier nose first, ending his race. Burton’s Ford went airborne and flipped once after contact before coming to rest on all four tires.
“I’m fine. I’ve hit a lot harder before, that’s for sure. It’s just unfortunate. I hate it for the Wood Brothers group,” Burton said. “They brought a really fast Ford Mustang down here and ended up on our lid, so that’s never good. I’d like to look back and see what happened. I don’t know, I just got pushed and didn’t take it the right way – the car didn’t take it the right way or got pushed in the wrong spot. I’m not sure. I couldn’t really tell. I was looking out front to see what I had to do next to side draft the next guy that was on me, so just a bummer. I don’t really know what we could have done different, but we’ll move on and get better from it.”
Other drivers involved were Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, Kurt Busch and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin.
Martin Truex, Jr. was scored as the leader at the time of the caution, allowing him to win the first stage of the season. Keselowski was second followed by rookie Todd Gilliland, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Joey Logano.
Austin Dillon, Erik Jones, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Bubba Wallace followed.
Prior to that, loose wheels were responsible for the first two cautions. Kaz Grala’s Chevrolet lost a wheel and that triggered a crash that involved Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe. The second driver to have a wheel issue was Kaulig Racing’s Justin Haley, whose left-front wheel seeming broke and failed to bring out the caution on lap 53.