DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — On a night that started with the Petty family giving the command to fire engines ended with the Wood Brothers in victory lane at Daytona International Speedway after Harrison Burton won Saturday night’s Cup race in overtime at Daytona International Speedway.
Burton’s victory marks the 100th Cup win for the Wood Brothers and sends Burton to the playoffs.
“I cried the whole victory lap,” said Burton after his first career Cup win. “Obviously got fired from this job. I wanted to do everything for the Wood Brothers that I could. They’ve given me an amazing opportunity in life. To get them 100 on my way out is amazing. We’re in the playoffs now. Let’s go to Darlington and see what happens.”
This is the eighth decade that Wood Brothers Racing has won a race in the NASCAR ranks.
MORE: Daytona Cup race results
MORE: What drivers said
Burton led only the final lap. His victory denied Kyle Busch a victory for a 20th consecutive season and a playoff spot. Instead, Busch finished second. Christopher Bell placed third, Cody Ware was fourth and Ty Gibbs finished fifth.
“It’s just frustrating,” Busch said. “We’ve led races here at Daytona going into the last restart and haven’t been able to pull off a victory.”
Chris Buescher, who finished 10th, holds the final playoff spot going into the next week’s regular season finale at Darlington Raceway. Buescher has a 21-point lead on Bubba Wallace, who finished sixth.
Saturday’s race saw Michael McDowell get airborne and Josh Berry go upside down in separate incidents. Both were OK.
“It just looked like the 2 (Austin Cindric) got pushed into me and, unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of these blow overs lately, but I mentioned on the TV broadcast – obviously paving that section helped keep me from really barrel rolling,” Berry said.
“As bad as it looked, they made a big improvement over what Ryan had last year. I just can’t believe we flipped two of our Stewart-Haas cars in a row like that, but it was just a great job by Rodney (Childers) and this whole 4 team. We were in contention all night and had a hell of a race car and had a shot at it.”
A push from Corey LaJoie into Noah Gragson started a 17-car crash about 100 laps from the finish. Ryan Preece, Denny Hamlin, Gragson and Chase Elliott were eliminated.
Daniel Suarez was eliminated when his car caught fire after the first stage. Suarez was pitting with Hamlin behind him. Some fuel was spilled in Suarez’s pit stall.
Hamlin went to exit his pit stall, got partway into Suarez’s pit stall but had to back up. Suarez couldn’t exit his stall with Harrison Burton in front of him. When Hamlin backed up, his exhaust triggered the fire, which raced to the back of Suarez’s car. Suarez exited the car safely.
“Just a bad deal,” Suarez told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider.
Stage 1 winner: Josh Berry
Stage 2 winner: Joey Logano
Notable: Chase Elliott failed to finish after being collected in a crash in the second stage. It is the first time this season he has failed to finish a race. Elliott had run all but one of the 6,438 completed going into Saturday night’s race.
Next: The regular season ends Sunday, Sept. 1 with the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (6 p.m. ET on USA Network).
