Bob Forks
FOX NASCAR Insider
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — With just 12 races remaining in the NASCAR Cup Series, Harrison Button pulled off a huge upset Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway, moving from No. 34 in the standings to a 2024 playoff spot.
Despite knowing for months that he would not be returning to the No. 21 car for Wood Brothers Racing after this year, Button avoided a major accident that knocked out several competitors, got a well-timed push from Parker Retzlaff and held off Kyle Busch on the final lap to claim the win.
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We don’t know where Button will race next year, but we do know he’ll have a Cup win on his resume and his 100th win for Wood Brothers Racing, which has been racing in NASCAR since 1950.
“I cried the whole cooldown lap,” Burton said. “It’s just been the hardest three years of my life. I can’t deny it. It’s just been hard, and these guys have supported me when it mattered most.”
The win leaves the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race in limbo, and two-time Cup champion Busch finds himself in a must-win situation before heading to the final regular-season race at Darlington Raceway next Sunday.
Bush finished second, Christopher Bell third, Cody Ware fourth and Ty Gibbs fifth.
Button, I’m so mad
Button has just one top-five and five top-10 finishes in the first 97 Cup races of his career, so he didn’t have much experience racing for a win in Cup before he got on the front row for the overtime restart.
“I was really lucky and won a lot of races when I was younger,” Burton said. “You just have to rely on the movies you see and the situations you’re in.”
The 23-year-old son of former Cup driver and current NBC analyst Jeff Burton said he cherishes the opportunity to race in Cup despite the challenges.
“You never know when you’re going to get another chance to drive,” Burton said. “I’ve had three years to drive, and I’ve worked with these guys (Wood Brothers) for three years. … When things got tough, we did a good job.”
Berry, McDowell fly into the air
Two wild incidents on the last lap saw Josh Berry slide hundreds of feet off the roof and hit the inside wall hard. That incident happened a few laps later after Michael McDowell swerved after contact with Austin Cindric and his car went upright before falling back on its wheels.
Neither driver was injured.
Berry slipped in the packed area last year after Ryan Freese suddenly flipped.
“Unfortunately, I just swerved,” Berry said. “The car lifted up and slid onto its roof.
“The packaging did its job compared to what we saw last year. … It was just a weird angle (to the wall). The car flipped over and got pretty crushed. The car did its job. I’m fine. It’s just disappointing because I really thought I could win it.”
Both drivers said it was simply a characteristic of the Daytona racing style, where NASCAR races in large groups with no time to react because the horsepower generated must be limited to prevent the cars from becoming airborne without contact.
“I was falling,” McDowell said. “I had my eyes closed, but it felt like whoever hit me fell back down. There was a moment where it got really bright and really quiet and then I got hit and fell back down. … That’s what happens after the Daytona race.
“Everyone is working hard and we all know we’re going to win because we have guys that deserve to win.”
Playoff situation changes
With Button grabbing one of the 16 playoff spots, there are now just three spots left for drivers without a championship title (although that could drop to just one if Austin Dillon wins his penalty appeal on Monday and a new winner is crowned at Darrington).
Martin Truex Jr., Ty Gibbs and Chris Buescher are currently on the cutoff ahead of Bobby Wallace, with Truex 58 points ahead, Gibbs 39 and Buescher 21. Wallace is 21 points behind Buescher and Ross Chastain is 27 points behind.
All other teams that fail to win, including Bush, will face a must-win situation in Darlington.
Bush was content with second place, and while the defeat was a huge shock, he was philosophical.
“Once they got ahead, it was hard to make anything happen from turn four to the start-finish because the car was so short on energy,” Busch said. “There was nothing I could do other than just completely wreck him. … Everything’s OK. We were really, really, really lucky (to avoid a wreck).”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has covered motorsports for decades, including more than 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine, and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @Bob Fork Class.
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