The Daytona 500 is a NASCAR Cup Series motor race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is the first of two Cup races held every year at Daytona, the second being the Coke Zero Sugar 400, and one of three held in Florida, with the annual Straight Talk Wireless 400 being held at Homestead south of Miami. From 1988 to 2019, it was one of the four restrictor plate races on the Cup schedule. The inaugural Daytona 500 was held in 1959 coinciding with the opening of the speedway and since 1982, it has been the season-opening race of the Cup Series.
The Daytona 500 is regarded as the most important and prestigious race on the NASCAR calendar, carrying by far the largest purse."Culture, Class, Distinction"Bennett, Tony. Culture, Class, Distinction. Routledge (2009) Disaggregating cultural capital. English translation (hardcover). Championship points awarded are equal to that of any other NASCAR Cup Series race. It is also the series' first race of the year; this phenomenon is unique in sports, which tend to have championships or other major events at the end of the season rather than the start. From 1995–2020, U.S. television ratings for the Daytona 500 were the highest for any auto race of the year, surpassing the traditional leader, the Indianapolis 500 which in turn greatly surpasses the Daytona 500 in gate attendance and international viewing. In 2021 the Indianapolis 500 surpassed the Daytona 500 in TV ratings and viewership. The 2006 Daytona 500 attracted the sixth largest average live global TV audience of any sporting event that year with 20 million viewers. As of 2026, the capacity is 102,000.
The race serves as the final event of Speedweeks and is also known as "The Great American Race" or the "Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing". Since its inception, the race has been held in mid-to-late February. From 1971 to 2011, and again since 2018, the event has been as associated with Presidents Day weekend, falling usually on the third Sunday of February. Since 2022, it has been held one week after the Super Bowl, the same day as the NBA All-Star Game, and on eight occasions, it has been run on Valentine's Day.
Since 1997, the winner of the Daytona 500 has been presented with the Harley J. Earl Trophy in Victory Lane, and the winning car is displayed in race-winning condition for one year at Daytona 500 Experience, a museum and gallery adjacent to Daytona International Speedway.
Origins
The race is the direct successor of shorter races held on the Daytona Beach Road Course. This long square was partially on the sand and also on the highway near the beach. Earlier events featured races with stock cars. A stock car race was held at Daytona International Speedway in 1959. It was the second 500-mile NASCAR race, following the annual Southern 500, and has been held every year since. By 1961, it began to be referred to as the Daytona 500,1959, 1960, and 1961 Daytona 500 Programs by which it is still commonly known.
Daytona International Speedway is long and a 500-mile race requires 200 laps to complete. However, the race was considered official after halfway (100 laps/250 miles) had been completed from 1959 to 2016. From 2017 to 2019, the race was considered official after the conclusion of Stage 2 (120 laps/300 miles) when stage-racing was introduced. In 2020, they revised the rule in which a race is considered official at either halfway or the conclusion of Stage 2 (whichever comes first, in this case halfway). The race has been shortened four times due to rain (in 1965, 1966, 2003, and 2009) and once in response to the energy crisis of 1974. Since the adaptation of the green–white–checkered finish rule in 2004, the race has gone past 500 miles on ten occasions (2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2023). It took two attempts to finish the race in 2010, 2011, and 2020. The 2023 running is the longest Daytona 500 contested, lasting 212 laps/530 miles.
Tyler Reddick is the defending winner.
History highlights
1959: Lee Petty, patriarch of the racing family, won the inaugural 500 Mile NASCAR International Sweepstakes at Daytona on February 22, 1959, defeating Johnny Beauchamp. 1960: Junior Johnson made use of the draft, then a little-understood phenomenon, to win while running a slower, year-old car in a field of 68 cars, the most in the history of the Daytona 500. 1961: First race to be called Daytona 500. 1965: The first rain-shortened Daytona 500. Fred Lorenzen was in the lead when the race was called on lap 133 of 200.Bob Zeller, Daytona 500: An Official History (Phoenix: David Bull Publishing, 2002): 48-52. 1966: Richard Petty becomes the first two-time winner, having previously won the 1964 race. Through 2024, only 12 drivers have won 2 or more Daytona 500s. 1967: Mario Andretti led 112 of the 200 laps including the last 33 to capture his first and only win in the Cup Series. 1968: For much of this race, both Cale Yarborough and (unrelated) LeeRoy Yarbrough traded the lead. With 5 laps to go, Cale made a successful slingshot pass on the third turn to take the lead from LeeRoy and never looked back as he won his first Daytona 500 by 1.3 seconds. 1969: Having learned from the previous year, LeeRoy Yarbrough would use the same slingshot treatment out of turn 3 on Charlie Glotzbach, to score the victory on the final lap. 1971: Richard Petty becomes the first three-time winner, including the 1964 and 1966 races. Through 2015, only 5 drivers have won 3 or more Daytona 500s. 1972: A. J. Foyt cruised into the lead on lap 80 and stayed there through the 200 lap race, lapping the entire field. Foyt beat second-place Charlie Glotzbach by nearly two laps, with Jim Vandiver finishing 6 laps down in third. 1973: Richard Petty becomes the first four-time winner, including the 1964, 1966, and 1971 races. Through 2015, only Petty (7 total) and Cale Yarborough have won at least 4 Daytona 500s. 1974: During the start of the 1974 NASCAR season, many races had their distance cut ten percent in response to the 1973 oil crisis. As a result, the 1974 Daytona 500 was shortened to 180 laps (450 miles), as symbolically, the race "started" on lap 21. Richard Petty became the first of only 4 drivers (as of 2021) to win consecutive Daytona 500s, while also setting a mark of 5 total wins. 1976: In the 1976 race, Richard Petty was leading on the last lap when he was passed on the backstretch by David Pearson. Petty tried to turn under Pearson coming off the final corner but didn't clear Pearson. The contact caused the drivers to spin into the grass in the infield just short of the finish line. Petty's car didn't start, but Pearson was able to keep his car running and limp over the finish line for the win. 1979: The 1979 race was the first Daytona 500 to be broadcast live on national television, airing on CBS, whose audience was increased in much of the Eastern and Midwestern USA due to a blizzard. (The Indianapolis 500 was only broadcast on tape delay that evening in this era; most races were broadcast only through the final quarter to half of the race, as was the procedure for ABC's Championship Auto Racing broadcasts; with the new CBS contract, the network and NASCAR agreed to a full live broadcast.) That telecast introduced in-car and low-level track-side cameras, which has now become standard in all sorts of automotive racing broadcasts. A final lap crash and subsequent fight between leaders Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison (along with Donnie's brother Bobby) brought national (if unwelcome) publicity to NASCAR, with the added emphasis of a snowstorm that bogged down much of the northeastern part of the United States. Donnie Allison was leading the race on the final lap with Yarborough drafting him tightly. As Yarborough attempted a slingshot pass at the end of the backstretch, Allison attempted to block him. Yarborough refused to give ground and as he pulled alongside Allison, his left side tires left the pavement and went into the wet and muddy infield grass. Yarborough lost control of his car and contacted Allison's car halfway down the backstretch. As both drivers tried to regain control, their cars made contact several more times before finally locking together and crashing into the outside wall in turn three. After the cars settled in the grass, Donnie Allison and Yarborough began to argue. After they had talked it out, Bobby Allison, who was lapped at that point, pulled over, began defending his brother, and a fight broke out. Richard Petty, who was over half a lap behind at the time, went on to win; with the brawl in the infield, the television audience scarcely noticed. The story was the talk of the water cooler the next day, even making the front page of The New York Times Sports section. 1980: Buddy Baker won the fastest Daytona 500 in history before the introduction of mandatory stage cautions in 2017, at 177.602 mph (285.809 km/h). 1981: Richard Petty becomes the first seven-time winner, three wins more than the second-highest multiple winner, Cale Yarborough. With wins in 1964, 1966, 1971, 1973, 1974, and 1979, Petty is the only driver to win in three different decades. 1982: The Daytona 500 becomes the opening race in the NASCAR season, a position held since. Bobby Allison wins his second Daytona 500 but many people consider this a controversial win because on lap 3 Bobby Allison's rear bumper broke away from the car (later it was discovered that it was welded on purpose by a wire welder) and caused a pileup further behind the leaders. Without a rear bumper, Allison's car gained an aerodynamic advantage and won the race by just over twenty-two seconds. 1983: Cale Yarborough was the first driver to run a qualifying lap over in his Chevrolet Monte Carlo; only to crash out during the second qualifying lap. Yarborough raced in a backup Pontiac LeMans displayed at a nearby Hardee's (Yarborough's sponsor) and took the backup car to his 3rd Daytona 500 victory. This would also be the final time a driver won a Daytona 500 in a Pontiac. 1984: Cale Yarborough completed a lap of , officially breaking the barrier at Daytona. He joined Richard Petty as the only drivers to win the race in consecutive years and to win the race four times overall. 1985: Bill Elliott dominated the race, and by lap 140, was close to lapping the entire field. During a pit stop, NASCAR officials held him in the pit area in order to repair a supposed broken headlight assembly. The two-minute pit stop dropped him to third, barely clinging to the lead lap. Elliott made up the deficit and survived a late-race caution and a final lap restart to win his first Daytona 500. Elliott would go on to win the first Winston Million. 1986: The race that came down to a two-car duel between Dale Earnhardt and Geoff Bodine. With 3 laps to go, Earnhardt was forced to make a pit stop for a "splash 'n go". However, as Earnhardt left the pits, he burned a piston, allowing Bodine to cruise to victory. 1987: Winner Bill Elliott qualified for the pole position at an all-time Daytona record of 210.364 mph (338.532 km/h). Bill Elliott dominated much of the race, leading 104 of the 200 laps. During two different points in the race, he pulled away from the other leaders and was all by himself on the track, leading the first 35 laps, 29 in a row at another point, and the last three.