Could Ware or Herbst go from worst to first at Daytona?

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Cody Ware and Riley Herbst have the chance to completely turn their NASCAR Cup Series season around this Saturday at Daytona International Speedway.

If Ware or Herbst can win Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400, they’ll earn their first top-10 finish of the 2025 season and something much bigger — a playoff berth guaranteeing they will finish no worse than 16th in the 36-driver points standings they’ve been at or near the bottom of for most of the season.

While the feat sounds improbable, it’s not impossible — at all.

Riley Herbst

• 35th in points entering Daytona
  • -357 points to the playoff cutline
• Best finish: 14th, Texas in May
• Average finish: 25.8
• 1 lap led (Lap 86 of 260, Atlanta in June)

Many people questioned the move to put Riley Herbst in the NASCAR Cup Series with 23XI Racing after the rumor mill floated Corey Heim’s name around after some strong runs last year.

As the regular season comes to an end, it could be easy to say the calls were justified but team owner Denny Hamlin has said Herbst is still learning and is inexperienced.

For being inexperienced, Herbst has quietly put together a solid, albeit not at all flashy, season. Through 25 races, he has just two DNFs — both from wrecks not of his own making — and has managed to stay out of trouble. On superspeedways, his finishes are decent. Again, not flashy.

Herbst hasn’t had many chances to rise up in quite the way the NASCAR Cup Series’ summer Daytona race lets a driver but this is his time. He had a solid run in the Daytona 500 before an overtime incident kicked him out of the top-10 (although sparing himself the incident with one of the best saves of the year).

In 2023, Herbst earned a pair of top-10 finishes on superspeedways — even finding himself leading 10 laps at Talladega in October and contending for the win until a bad bump sent him sliding back to ninth at the checkered flag.

Toyota has an armada of drivers that race well, even if qualifying isn’t up to snuff. Herbst has the blessing of being on the No. 2 team in the manufacturer with a team owner who is in one of the best cars in the field. If Toyota can position themselves well enough on strategy to have solid track position for the end of the race, the only hurdle is to avoid wrecks and get to the checkered flag.

Herbst can get there — as he did in the 2023 Daytona 500 — and there’s a case to be made for the other driver similar to him.

Cody Ware

• 36th in points entering Daytona
  • -481 points to the cutline
• Best finish: 13th, Atlanta in June
• Average finish: 30.1
• Two laps led (Lap 49 of 200, Michigan in June; Lap 64, Atlanta in February)

Going into the 26th and final race before the playoffs, Ware has just four other lead-lap finishes better than 30th this season: 26th at Michigan in June, 27th at Darlington in April — and 29th at Pocono in June and Watkins Glen in August.

Ware has kept a low profile this season and only fallen out of races due to incidents and woes out of his control, like a heavy last-lap crash in Chicago. The 30-year-old North Carolinian has made progress — and picked up the meats — but is still a far cry from other prospective underdogs in the field.

If anything, Ware is the true underdog in the field. He hasn’t shown the same strength on qualifying days, like Todd Gilliland or Cole Custer, and isn’t high up on the totem pole to get any kind of elite help in the race, like Riley Herbst may, but he has a record of surviving and advancing — especially in the NextGen era.

Ware has four finishes of 17th or better at Daytona since 2022. When Jeff’s little boy surged ahead with the force of Leigh Diffey in the booth and Parker Retzlaff on his bumper, Ware finished fourth to Harrison Burton and secured his second top-10 finish in the summer Daytona race.

Two years before, Ware finished sixth in the August race — after finishing 17th in the 2022 Daytona 500 and before finishing 14th in the 2023 Daytona 500.

Wrecks are more common at Daytona in the NextGen era and Ware is keen on where to be to avoid them and get a good finish. Even without wrecks playing a factor, Rick Ware Racing can win at Daytona — as evidenced by Corey LaJoie driving through the field and almost winning the Daytona 500 this year.

What would this mean?

If either Ware or Herbst win, it will drop a nuke in a playoff powder keg raring up for Daytona after Austin DIllon’s dominant win at Richmond to make the playoffs from 25th in points.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

In this game, either Tyler Reddick or Alex Bowman could miss the playoffs after weeks on end in the top-10 in points, racking up top-five finishes, double-digit top-10s, over 150 laps led and an average finish that ranks top-10 among all drivers with several close calls with victory lane sprinkled in.

The nerves amp up when you consider three of the last five Daytona summer races have seen someone win their win into the playoffs, including two of the last three.

It all remains to be seen at Daytona whether worst can become first or if status quo will be proven so.