2024 Summer Daytona Race Report

The 2024 summer Daytona race report features an upset to the playoff race, bad luck for the regular-season title contenders and a lot of carnage.

Caution/Lead-O-Gram

As usual, we start the 2024 summer Daytona race report with the caution/lead-o-gram, which gives us a gestalt view of the race. Think of it as the 30,000-foot view.

The upper graph shows you a timeline of the races, with cautions shown according to type. Note that my caution designations sometimes differ from NASCAR’s. For example, the second caution-for-cause was liquid on track but the real reason was the No. 16’s engine let go.

Let’s start with the less-colorful graph, which is the caution-o-gram on top.

Cautions

There were seven cautions in total: two planned (stage breaks) and five unplanned. Of the five unplanned, there were:

• 3 accidents for 14 laps
• 1 engine failure for 7 laps
• 1 spin for 4 laps

The two stage cautions took up 9 laps. That’s a total of 34 caution laps, or 20.7% of the race run under caution. That’s not too unusual for the stage racing era.

Cautions don’t include red flags, which means this graph doesn’t reflect the 6 minute, 52 second red flag caused by Josh Berry’s car getting up in the air and landing on its roof. Thankfully, Berry was all right and the race resumed.

The total number of accidents is just about average for Daytona. Last year’s summer Daytona race had only 3, which is unusual.

Lead Changes

The 2024 summer Daytona race had a total of 40 lead changes, which better-than-average for stage races. This year’s Daytona 500 had 41 lead changes, which last year’s summer race had only 22.

NASCAR also tabulates the total number of green-flag passes for the lead. The 2024 summer Daytona race had 201 total green-flag passes for the lead. That number is always much higher at superspeedways and not always meaningful given that drivers can go from first to twenty-third in a quarter of a lap. But it does allow us to compare Daytona races.

The graph below shows the number of green-flag passes for all Daytona races.

• Three of the last four races have the highest numbers of green-flag passes for the lead of any races at Daytona in the stage-racing era.
• Last summer’s race was low, with only 103 green-flag passes for the lead.
• Even though there was a fuel-saving period for this race, it was brief.

Lead-Change Types

Normal lead changes are marked at the start/finish line. The 2024 summer Daytona race report shows 40 lead changes overall, with 35 of those lead changes classified as earned. Earned means that the lead change happened because the new leader did something to get the lead. There were:

• 30 green-flag passes – that’s on the high end for Daytona races
• 3 lead changes on pit road, during the yellow flag
• 2 lead changes on restarts

In addition, there were five unearned lead changes. Unearned lead changes are when a driver inherits the lead because of something another driver(s) did.

• 1 lead change due to the leader being involved in an accident
• 4 lead changes due to the leader(s) pitting under the yellow flag.

Leading Drivers

Sixteen different drivers led laps at the 2024 summer Daytona race. That’s about average for Daytona. There were 20 leaders in this year’s Daytona 500.

The lead-o-gram shows a distinct change in the race pace, with a lot of lead changes in the first two stages and fewer leaders toward the end of the race.

Carnage

Only seven of the 40 drivers in the race were not involved in at least one caution. (Daniel Suarez was technically not involved in a caution, but had to be yanked from his car when the entire back half caught on fire.) Eventual winner Harrison Burton was one of the seven cars that didn’t get at least minor damage during the race.

This is another case where I used my own numbers rather than NASCAR’s. They classified the last crash of the race — the one where Berry went upside down — as only involving the No. 4 and No. 2 cars, but a number of other cars were involved.

Poor William Byron was involved in all three accidents and earned one of the 15 DNFs of this race.

The Balance Sheet for the 2023 Summer Daytona Race Report

The good:

• Despite already knowing he won’t be back in the 21 next year, Harrison Burton won his first Cup Series race, the 100th race for the Wood Brothers and did it with his whole family there.
• The stats show that there was a lot of passing. A lot of different drivers led
• 30 green-flag passes.
• Michael McDowell’s car staying on the ground after being turned.
• Kyle Busch taking the high road and not wrecking Burton for the win — despite Busch being in the longest slump of his career.
• Mother Nature for keeping rain away during the race.

The bad:

• I’m happy for Burton, the Wood Brothers and everyone else. But, just like the Dillon win in Richmond, having the lowest-ranked of all charter drivers in the playoffs looks bad for the sport.
  • Burton is unlikely to be a factor in the playoffs, even at Talladega. If Keselowski hadn’t jumped the start and Busch hadn’t decided not to wreck Burton, one of them would have won this race.
  • Burton’s win pushes out a more-deserving team. That driver also would likely not make much difference in the playoffs, but they lose the bonuses (money, publicity, incentives) received for just being one of the final 16.
• Drivers being just a little too anxious a little too early. Some bad pushing was bad judgement while some of it just looked like bad execution or incompetence.
• Berry’s car taking off in the air, landing on its roof and hitting the SAFER barrier upside down. As soon as these cars get sideways, they look an awful lot like airplane wings. NASCAR added a right-side deflector after Corey LaJoie went airborne last week in Michigan, but it didn’t prevent Berry’s ride.

The ugly

• The people who simultaneously accuse NASCAR of not caring about safety because cars go airborne and cry for more horsepower. The laws of physics are absolute. The Next Gen car doesn’t go airborne at a significantly lower speed than any previous version of car.
• Corey LaJoie suggested that the new air jack option was responsible for his crash in Michigan. NASCAR R&D explained to him why it wasn’t, but some outlets ran with the first part of the story and ignored the second.