Early wreck takes young guns out of Daytona 500

DAYTONA BEACH, FL– A wreck on lap 6 of Monday’s Daytona 500 sent three young drivers home with wrecked race cars to start their 2024 campaign. 

Lap six was the final lap for Carson Hocevar, Kaz Grala and Harrison Burton, thanks to some early aggressive racing.

Brad Keselowski got into John Hunter Nemechek. That sent Nemechek into Burton and Hocevar who slid through the tri-oval grass. 

The No. 21 and No. 77 cars then spun back onto the track. Grala had nowhere to go and hit the No. 21 car.

Hocevar ended his day stuck in the grass. For his No. 77 team, the disappointment came with a big group in attendance for today’s race. 

“I didn’t really see anything. I was just going where I could go,” Hocevar said. “Just a bummer for my No. 77 Gainbridge / Zeigler Auto Group Chevy team. There are a lot of people here from Gainbridge and Zeigler here. And I wanted to be able to put on a good showing. Just really disappointing to have our race end early.”

Fuel saving was in full effect early. Leaders ran at half throttle even on lap six.

“Fuel saving definitely stacks up a little bit and the leaders’ fuel-saving puts that third lane into play,” Burton said.  “I’m OK.  The hit was probably harder than it should have been just coming back across the field like that.  It’s a pretty helpless feeling, but I’m OK.  I felt fine.  All good.  I’m just over wrecking early that’s for sure.”

Burton has wrecked out of three consecutive editions of the Daytona 500.

Grala said he didn’t have much control over where he could go in the pack. He just had to hope he was lucky.

“Yeah, I mean for sure.  As soon as you get three-wide you know that everybody is pushing, but I figured that these guys wouldn’t want to wreck this early.  I don’t know.  Maybe somebody did,” Grala said.

The young guns will look for redemption next week in Atlanta in the Ambetter Health 400. The green flag is set to fly at 3 P.M. EST next Sunday on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.