The ‘big’ Daytona race was nothing short of a huge mess. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong during the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway last night. Two gigantic crashes swept half the field in the carnage each time. The first one of those was when Corey LaJoie poked Noah Gragson’s car from the rear, shoving him into the wall. The predicament that ensued was multiple cars spinning away on the backstretch.

Gragson ended up being eliminated from the race. Unfortunately, Chase Elliott had to face his first DNF through the season; that must have really stung these drivers. And Gragson had some things to say about another one of the crash victims.

Who all got affected in the tangle?

The race had not even reached midway when some contact happened at the backstraight between the #7 and the #10 cars on lap 60. While it is okay to push on ovals in order to take the lead, there is a lot of skill involved in the proper execution of the act. Now, we’ve witnessed what one wrong push is capable of doing.

And Noah Gragson understands the contact aspect of the game, which is evident from his decision not to push too hard at Ross Chastain. “I was trying to get away from the 1 (Chastain) in the middle line. I was pushing him, and I pushed him a couple times, and he just couldn’t take a push. He was super squirrely, and I didn’t feel comfortable pushing him just because he was out of shape by himself,” explained Gragson to a track journalist from Frontstretch.

Gragson further mentioned that the ‘big one’ has gotten rougher over time. “It seemed like it was intense from the start of the green flag in Stage 1. Our car, we were just bouncing the nose and felt we were bouncing the front tires. Place feels like it’s got rougher since we were here for the 500,” said Gragson.

The melee shuffled up both the regular season championship contenders and the playoff bubble to a great extent. Ross Chastain, who entered the Daytona race with just one point over the cutoff for Playoffs, is now 27 points behind the cutoff, placed at 18. Chris Buescher has temporarily taken the last Playoff spot, which is subject to change according to the Darlington finale.

There is a lot of work that Stewart Haas Racing needs to put in to efficiently conclude the regular season next week as all of its NCS drivers are out of playoff contention.

It wasn’t a good day to race for SHR

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The eventuality of that first crash of the race for Noah Gragson was the elimination from the race. But another one of SHR’s cars faced a dire situation towards the very end of the race. It was the upside-down spinoff of Josh Berry’s #4. Rodney Childers must have been devastated by the sight of the same incident happening twice on that track, a year apart. Thankfully, Berry was rescued a few minutes later without any major injury.

There was some aerodynamic modification, a shark fin on the rear window, done by NASCAR before this race to prevent such situations after Michigan’s barrel wreck. However, it seems that the trick didn’t work, neither for Berry nor for Michael McDowell. There need to be some changes in the underbody of the cars to minimize the lift-offs, as suggested by Eric Estepp while reviewing the race specifics.

Nonetheless, the widespread expectations from the Daytona race to be dramatic were met to the very last second. What do you think?