Ryan Blaney Takes Electric Victory at Daytona; Playoff Field Set

Mike Watters-Imagn Images

Ryan Blaney has a knack for pulling through in the closing laps at superspeedway tracks in the NASCAR Cup Series. On Saturday night, the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse did it yet again in the Coke Zero Sugar 400, the regular season finale, at Daytona International Speedway.

Race Results: Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona

With two laps to go, Blaney found himself in the 13th position, but as he latched onto fellow Ford Performance racer Cole Custer's No. 41 Haas Factory Team machine, Blaney shoved Custer through the minefield of race cars. Coming to the white flag, Custer, who emerged as the leader of the third lane at the top of the track, took the race lead.

At this moment, Custer made a move, which disconnected him from Blaney and instead put him into a blockfest with Justin Haley. This is what likely led to Blaney being in a prime position to score the race win. As Custer scratched and clawed for position, Blaney pulled out to the lead. Coming to the finish line, Blaney was leading the charge, but he had to survive a four-wide charge to the finish line with Daniel Suarez, Justin Haley, and Cole Custer to pick up the win.

After the thrilling win, Blaney did something that he saves for very rare special occasions -- he performed a post-race burnout.

"I was fired up, man," Blaney explained in his post-race press conference. "Multiple reasons. Whenever you win at these superspeedways, it pumps you up. And then, the last two laps we had was pretty awesome. Like, how we came from 14th, or wherever we were to get the lead. And I didn't know if we got it initially at first."

Incredibly, Blaney was able to rally to finish second in the regular-season standings to William Byron despite the driver of the No. 12 Ford picking up seven DNFs throughout the opening 26 races of the season.

"I think it just speaks volumes to how good we've been when we have finished races," Blaney said. "Obviously, you don't want to have that many DNFs on the card. I'd say half of those DNFs, we had a good shot at winning the race, or at least running like top-five."

This win marks the second of the 2025 season for Blaney, who tied teammate Joey Logano for the most laps led in the race with 27, and it amounts to the 15th victory of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion's career.

While Blaney was busy celebrating his latest win, Suarez saw his bid to end his farewell season with Trackhouse Racing as a Playoff contender come to an end as he missed victory lane by just 0.031 seconds. Similar to Blaney, Suarez made an incredible charge over the final two laps of the race as he knifed his way from 19th to a runner-up finish. It just wasn't quite enough.

It was the same story for Haley, who was just 0.036 seconds shy of his second career victory.

Custer came home in fourth, and the Haas Factory Team driver says he'll be busy replaying the race trying to understand what he could have done differently in the closing laps, but he was happy to get a well-deserved good finish for his team.

"Yeah, you're definitely going to kick yourself and relive it to see what you could have done differently. You know, I tried to stay with [Blaney] because I knew he was going to have the momentum coming to the line from the top. So, I wanted to stay with him, but [Haley] was able to get clear, and then I had to get around him and got disconnected from [Blaney]," Custer explained to Racing America On SI after the race. "Man, I thought we had it. I felt like we made the right moves at the end to set ourselves up, but to come up that short, it just stings. But, it's nice to get a finish that our guys deserve; they've worked so hard this year."

Erik Jones ended the race in fifth. For Jones, it was a miraculous rally in the last three laps as he was nudged out of line by Kyle Larson on the backstretch with a couple of laps to go, which resulted in him losing his chance at a win.

Larson, Chris Buescher, Ty Gibbs, Josh Berry, and Chase Elliott rounded out the top-10 finishers.

Cody Ware was a driver, who surprised on Saturday night as he was up front early and often. Ware led a career-high 23 laps on the night, but fizzled on the final run of the race to finish in 20th.

With Blaney, who was already locked into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, winning the race, it secured a post season berth for Alex Bowman, who was unsure about his chance at the postseason after he exited the race on Lap 28 as a result of a massive melee on the frontstretch.

Bowman's crash also secured a Playoff berth for Tyler Reddick, who also found trouble early in the race. Reddick crashed in an incident with Todd Gilliland on Lap 18, which caused him to severely damage the front end of his car.

Reddick would salvage a 21st-place finish, and he'll look to find championship form starting next weekend at Darlington.

The 16 drivers, who will compete for the NASCAR Cup Series championship this season include William Byron, Blaney, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Reddick, Chase Briscoe, Bowman, Bubba Wallace, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Josh Berry, Shane van Gisbergen, and Austin Dillon.

Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the opening race of the three-race Round of 16 of the Playoffs, the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. That race is scheduled for Sunday, August 31. That race will be televised by USA Network with coverage set to kick off at 6:00 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.