Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman entered the final race of the 2025 regular season above the cutline, knowing that if a driver below wins, they're battling for one spot. Two early incidents, back-to-back, have drastically affected both drivers' chances. First, Tyler Reddick was involved in a two-car crash along with Todd Gilland, in which he hit the inside wall, smushing the front of his No. 25 Toyota Camry nose.
This narrowed the margin between the two, with Bowman running up near the front of the pack on the restart from Reddick's caution with 12 laps to go in the first stage and Reddick running laps down.
Three laps later, Bowman's luck would change. Bubba Wallace, Joey Logano, and Kyle Busch were running three wide, battling for fourth position, when a slight bump from Kyle Larson sent Wallace down, hitting Logano. Wallace and Busch touched noses in front of the Penske NO. 22, sending the three cars scatting up and down the banking, collecting nine others, including Bowman.
Bowman's damage was much greater than that of Reddick's, and the No. 48 Hendrick Chevrolet was first sent to DVP before ultimately being pulled out of the race, ending Bowman's night. Bowman can still be the last man in, if there is a repeat winner at the end of the Daytona night race.
Wallace is among the others out of the race, and after reviewing the crash with NBC Sports takes the blame for the racing incident.
"I'll take the blame for it," Wallace told NBC Sports. "Unfortunately. Everything was going too good, too early to be true. Something was bound to happen. I hate that we were involved in it."
Coleman Pressley, Logano's spotter, radioed his driver as the crash was starting, letting him know he was stuck in the middle and that his competitors might not know how close they were running.
"Mid-three, I don't think they know," Pressley said.
"They didn't know I got a sandwich," Logano replied while crashing.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Busch, Riley Herbst, and Noah Gragson were among the 12 cars involved that will not get restarted. Without the chance of a win, and below the cut line these four drivers will offically not make the playoffs.
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