Daytona 500 crash tracker: Every wreck and caution at NASCAR’s biggest race

Denny Hamlin avoided The Big One to win the Daytona 500 in 2020, a crash known more for who it hospitalized — Ryan Newman — than who escaped it.

Last year, it was Michael McDowell escaping a last-lap crash to claim the checkered flag.

When will The Big One happen today at Daytona International Speedway? If history is any indication — or the Truck Series and Xfinity races here over the weekend — it will again be in Lap 200, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty crashes in the 499 miles before the final stretch at the famed superspeedway, and we’ll be tracking each wreck and unscheduled caution between the green and checkered flags.

Refresh this page for the latest crashes and videos highlights of them.

Daytona 500 crashes

Checkered flag: Find the final results here.

Lap 196: Ricky Stenhouse led the race with seven laps to go, but he got turned and will exit Sunday’s race empty-handed. Stenhouse and Chris Buescher were the ones most impacted. Twenty-five out of 40 cars have been involved in a collision this Daytona 500.

Lap 193: NASCAR has decided to red-flag the race after a collision takes several cars out. It appears that Kyle Larson knocked into Kevin Harvick, who then hit Austin Cindric, whose car then spun out and caused a big wreck. Among everyone involved outside of those three drivers: Noah Gragson, Todd Gilliland and Erik Jones.

Lap 151: Joey Logano’s comeback attempt has taken a big blow. Several cars got spun out after Tyler Reddick was bumped from behind. Among them: Logano, Reddick and Martin Truex Jr., who finished first in the race’s first two stages.

Stage 2 ended without a single caution.

Lap 62: William Byron, Harrison Burton and Kyle Busch wreck from the front — but not before involving Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Ross Chastain, Alex Bowman and Harrison Burton. Burton’s car went airborne and turned after a big push from Brad Keselowski. Burton’s car was too damaged to visit the garage and thus rode to the care center. He was released shortly thereafter. Hamlin headed into the garage after the chaos, too, and is done for the day.

Lap 52: Another caution comes out for a missing wheel. This time it’s Justin Haley’s car. Haley’s tire, completely intact, appeared to slip off the car and roll into the grass.

Lap 44: Chase Briscoe in the No. 14 car gets bumped from behind and spins out on a turn. The one-car spin wasn’t too consequential as Briscoe has filed back into the race. Kaz Grala lost his right-rear tire moments before, which caused the snafu. The new Next Gen cars only have one lug nut.

35 laps in: It took a while before the race’s first caution, which is an improvement from last year’s race that had its first caution in Lap 3.

This story was originally published February 20, 2022 at 3:27 PM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.

Matt L. Stephens

The Charlotte Observer

Matt L. Stephens is the Senior Sports Editor for The Charlotte Observer and oversees sports coverage for the Raleigh News & Observer, The State in Columbia, S.C., and McClatchy’s other properties across the Southeast. Before coming to Charlotte in July 2019, Matt was an award-winning editor, columnist and investigative reporter at The Denver Post and Fort Collins Coloradoan.