Jeff Gordon’s reaction from the pit box said it all about the final lap. Chase Elliott, who nearly ended the night basking in glory, instead watched the prize slip through his fingers. It made for a heartbreaking finish for both the driver and his Hendrick Motorsports team.
Just before the final lap of the Daytona 500, Elliott surged into the lead after Carson Hocevar and Erik Jones tangled while entering Turn 1 on the white-flag lap. In that moment, it felt as though the stars were lining up for his first Daytona 500 triumph. But the chaos that followed on the final lap quickly pulled the rug out from under him.
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Reflecting on the turmoil, Elliottadmitted he could not fully piece together what triggered the initial wreck. Still, the lead fell into his lap after a push from Zane Smith, allowing him to pull clear down the backstretch. Smith then gave him another shove into Turn 3, and from there it was just the two of them running nose to tail. At that point, Elliott sensed the momentum shifting, as if another wreck was brewing behind him and waiting to boil over at any moment.
“And unfortunately, that was accurate. And, man, that’s a really, really tough place to be, truthfully. And, obviously, looking back, you can run it through your mind a thousand times,” Elliott said after the race.
“Do you do something different? Do you, I feel like if I had thrown a double block on the #45, probably would have just crashed us at that point in time. So I feel like you had to kind of pick your battles,” he stated.
The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion added that on the final lap, he thought someone might give him a push up top and hand him one last shot at the line. Instead, he was turned around. Elliott admitted it stung to come off Turn 4 with the lead and still walk away empty-handed. But that is the nature of this race, and this time, the No. 9 team found itself on the wrong side of the coin.
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Elliott appeared to have the upper hand overTyler Reddick on the final lap, before Reddick ultimately stole the show. Entering the final corner, Reddick dipped low to claim the bottom lane while Brad Keselowski attempted to throw his hat into the ring by making it three-wide and charging around Elliott’s outside. At the same time, Reddick’s teammate Riley Herbst surged forward and edged ahead of Keselowski.
The timing could not have been worse. Herbst made contact with Keselowski, and that initial touch sent Herbst into Elliott’s right rear as Reddick shot past on the left. The No. 9 car snapped around and slammed head-on into the SAFER barrier before skidding back down the track, spinning backward all the way to the finish. Just like that, Elliott’s 2026 Daytona 500 ended in a bitter flash of the wrong kind of fireworks.
Reddick crossed the line ahead of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Joey Logano, Elliott, and Keselowski, as battered stock cars were left scattered across the racing surface.
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