Blaney Wins at Daytona, Reddick Takes Final Playoff Spot Over Dillon

Ryan Blaney won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 from Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night in NASCAR’s regular season finale.

Blaney took the lead on the final restart, and was able to hold off the field as a wreck took out most of the leaders heading into the final corner.  Blaney was ahead of Chris Buescher as the caution flag flew, and he was able to head to victory lane for the second-consecutive weekend.

Blaney said he had to use his superspeedway experience to choose the right line while in the lead.

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“You never know how the end of these are going to turn out,” Blaney said.  “Down the back you just don’t know what lane is going to get a bigger run.”

Blaney said the push from Corey LaJoie on the restart is what helped him get to victory lane.

“The biggest thing is just getting the push,” Blaney said.  “It really all started with [LaJoie] giving me a good push and getting me out front.”

With only one spot open for the Playoffs heading into the regular-season finale, Buescher was in position late to get the victory and lock himself into the Playoffs.

Buescher came up one spot short after restarting as the leader heading in overtime, and said he will be thinking about his final restart.

“I’m sure I’ll play it back and find something else different,” Buescher said.  “Top line wasn’t organized at the start and bottom was; they were digging.  Difficult ending to a day…to miss that Playoff spot by one spot.”

Tyler Reddick came into the race in the final Playoff spot, but his chances seemed to diminish throughout the race as his teammate Austin Dillon picked up points in the first two stages before Reddick was involved in a big accident towards the end of the race.

Reddick’s team got the car back out on track as multiple winless drivers battled for the win in the closing laps.  Reddick was able to sneak through the last-lap accident that collected Dillon and locked himself into the final Playoff spot.

Reddick said it was a stressful race with everything that went wrong.

“Almost felt helpless there, but we didn’t give up and we fought through it,” Reddick said.  “I knew it was about 14 points I had on that green-white-checkered.  It was just go hard and try to stay up tight to the cars ahead of me and keep the nose out of clean air.”

Dillon said his team fought hard with a fast car before their luck ran out at the end of the race to end their Playoff push.

“We fought our butts off in the stages; made some good moves to get stages points,” Dillon said.  “We fought hard.  The car was fast…unfortunate that we’re not in the Playoffs.  We gave it all we could and fought to the very end.”

Unofficial results:

1. Ryan Blaney

2. Chris Buescher

3. Bubba Wallace

4. Ryan Newman

5. Ryan Preece

6. Tyler Reddick

7. Justin Haley

8. Alex Bowman

9. Chase Elliott

10. BJ McLeod

11. Josh Bilicki

12. Erik Jones

13. Kurt Busch

14. Denny Hamlin

15. Aric Almirola

16. Kevin Harvick

17. Corey LaJoie

18. Austin Dillon

19. Ross Chastain

20. Daniel Suarez

21. Kyle Larson

22. Chase Briscoe

23. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

24. Joey Logano

25. Cole Custer

26. Matt DiBenedetto

27. Anthony Alfredo

28. David Starr

29. Cody Ware

30. Martin Truex Jr.

31. Garrett Smithley

32. Joey Gase

33. Christopher Bell

34. Brad Keselowski

35. Kyle Busch

36. Kaz Grala

37. Landon Cassill

38. William Byron

39. Quin Houff

40. Michael McDowell

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