DAYTONA BEACH, Florida — They do not name it the Truthful American Race.

They don’t name it the Satisfying American Race, the Predictable American Race or the Tidy American Race. It is the Nice American Race. As in, nice at maintaining us guessing.

NASCAR’s greatest single occasion, which was held for the 66th time on a rain-postponed Monday night on the self-declared World Middle of Racing, will be described by a listing of lead traits that shifts and shuffles extra chaotically than this yr’s Daytona 500 pinball machine of a leaderboard that produced 41 lead modifications between 20 completely different drivers, 5 over the race’s closing 20 laps.

However truthful? No. By no means truthful. That is the character of a 2.5-mile superspeedway with tight quarters in skyscraper turns, an asphalt beast that has by no means made a lot sense to any eyes, be they engineers, spectators or the poor souls who’ve determined to drive round that monster at 200 mph.

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“It is speedway racing. It is loads of enjoyable till it sucks,” declared Joey Logano, who led a race-best 45 laps however ended his night time thirty third, wrecked whereas operating third and battling for the lead once more with lower than ten laps remaining. “It is often the fellows who begin the wreck that survive. That is the irritating half.”

The automobile whose nostril discovered the automobile that hit Logano? It was within the accordion collision solely as a result of one other automobile had hit it when the automobiles forward of them began scrambling and compelled everybody behind them to abruptly decelerate, and was pushed William Byron. Byron’s Chevy was popped from behind by teammate Alex Bowman, inflicting Byron to hit second place Brad Keselowski, who was became Logano, who then teamed as much as take out 20 different automobiles behind them. That group included 9 of the 20 drivers who had led the race sooner or later through the day.

When the checkered flag was lastly proven almost half-hour later, who was the winner? It was Byron.

See? Not truthful.

“You are making an attempt to make the best choices, the best calls, to get your self into place to win the race,” mentioned Jeff Gordon, who received this race twice driving the identical No. 24 Chevy that he now helps oversee as chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. “However in such a racing, when the end is coming, there is not a lot you may management however to place your foot into the gasoline and hope that no matter occurs — as a result of one thing goes to occur — that you just be out in entrance of it.”

One thing undoubtedly occurred. And it did once more when Byron was main and barely made it throughout the start-finish line to start the 199th and closing circuit earlier than one other multicar crash unfurled behind him.

“Sure, you already know that is coming. So, in case you are lucky to be within the lead — and by the way in which, that additionally makes you the goal — you look within the rearview mirror and hope you may outrun it,” Byron mentioned in Victory Lane, his firesuit freshly saturated in champagne. “We did. And I can not imagine it.”

Neither might lots of the tens of hundreds of followers who confirmed up for a sunny, cool Monday afternoon inexperienced flag after Daytona had additionally been saturated in two days of near-record February Central Florida rainfall. They’d watched fan favorites similar to Byron’s different Hendrick Motorsports teammates, former Cup champs Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson, run up entrance. They’d cheered and booed as they watched veterans similar to Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch and Keselowski — all future NASCAR Corridor of Famers — additionally spend time on the level, solely to return up quick. Hamlin did not earn a historic fourth Daytona 500 win. The opposite three prolonged their Daytona 500 profession droughts to a mixed 0-for-54.

Nevertheless, nobody, not these within the grandstands Monday night time nor these watching from dwelling, ought to make the lazy mistake of viewing Byron’s victory as a fluke.

“I am at all times the ‘different man’ proper?” Byron half-joked, pointing in his very personal constructing to Elliott and Larson, to not point out Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., even Terry Labonte, Tim Richmond, Geoff Bodine and the opposite legends who’ve received at Hendrick Motorsports. His win Monday was the workforce’s record-tying ninth Nice American Race triumph and got here on the fortieth anniversary of its very first Cup race, when Bodine completed eight within the 1984 Daytona 500. “That has been arduous on me. I’ve most likely let it hassle me an excessive amount of, nevertheless it has additionally been a giant motivator for me. I got here into this yr with a chip on my shoulder due to it. I’m a quiet man. My background in racing is not typical. I began out in gaming, a child who was only a NASCAR fan, and I obtained a comparatively late soar on driving. I do not come from a protracted line of racers. However OK, underestimate me. See how that works out.”

Make no mistake, this race produces flukes. Or, put extra kindly, unexpected victories. One yr in the past, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and little JTG Daugherty Racing earned the primary win for the driving force in seven years and for the workforce in almost a decade, and did it within the sport’s most prestigious race. In 2022, Austin Cindric, a de facto rookie, earned his first — and thus far, solely — Cup Sequence win. In 2021, Michael McDowell snapped a profession 0-for-357 winless streak by outlasting a demolition derby of a 500 and pulling right into a pandemic-emptied Victory Lane.

However Byron led the Cup Sequence with six wins one yr in the past and made the reduce for the season finale Championship 4. The yr earlier than he received two races. In seven years of driving at NASCAR’s prime degree, he has made the Playoffs six instances, lacking solely his rookie marketing campaign, and has now posted at the least one win in every of the previous 5 years. His eleventh profession win not solely all however ensures him a spot on this yr’s fall playoff discipline, it additionally strikes him previous Donnie Allison on NASCAR’s all-time victories listing. Allison was inducted into the NASCAR Corridor of Fame final month.

Byron is 26 years outdated.

“What we learn about this race is that we do not know what will occur. For a very long time, we have now hauled zero trophies dwelling, however as a substitute we have now hauled dwelling loads of wrecked race automobiles,” an emotional Rick Hendrick defined, fast to remind that, sure, this was his ninth Daytona 500 win, however his first in a decade. “There are at all times loads of surprises on this race and at this place. Largely dangerous ones. However nobody needs to be shocked that William Byron is a Daytona 500 champion.”

Hendrick reached over and grabbed the arm of Gordon.

“He reminds of you this man again within the day,” he mentioned. “He has a lot expertise and he is simply getting began. It would not appear truthful, does it?”