The season has begun, and so has a string of heartbreaks. The Daytona 500 uplifted a lot of NASCAR Cup Series drivers’ hopes. The unpredictable nature of the 2.5-mile superspeedway, with rapid lead changes and unforeseen caution flags, changed the storyline by the second. And Chase Elliott thought he would be the final protagonist of this story – only to yield to Tyler Reddick and leave Jeff Gordon crestfallen.

Chase Elliott nurses his wounds from Daytona

“It was, you know, pretty disappointing,” Chase Elliott said in the post-race interview. “I mean, like I don’t know what else to tell you other than we were leading the Daytona 500 off of turn four coming to the checkered flag. and we didn’t win.”

Chase Elliott started in 4th place on Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series season opener, and could not progress further. The No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy driver led for two laps towards the end of the Daytona 500, soon after Carson Hocevar’s spin. He was helped with a push by Zane Smith; however, even Tyler Reddick benefited from Riley Herbst’s push and passed him at the exit of turn 4. Then, chaos unfolded,

Herbst’s No. 63 Toyota threw a block at Brad Keselowski’s No. 6 Ford. This triggered a massive wreck in which Chase Elliott got caught. Herbst clipped the right rear of Elliott’s Chevrolet, and Elliott crashed into the outside wall. This depressing fallout left Jeff Gordon, the vice-chairman of HMS, visibly disappointed. His animated gestures at the pit box could be seen as Gordon threw his hands up in the air in frustration.

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Chase Elliott crossed the finish start/finish line in fourth, the same place where he started.

“I’m not the type of person that ever lets myself get there in the first place,” he said. “At the end of the day, that’s part of this style of racing. So, I knew we were racing back to the line. They seemed pretty keen on wanting us to race back to the line, or they would have thrown the caution, you know, a long time before that.”

Chase Elliott eventually accepted his fate. “Yeah, proud of the week. You know, I thought it was a lot of good stuff and came out to the top five, I guess, for whatever that’s worth. Turn around backwards in, but yeah, just hate to be that close, you know. Such a big deal down here. Kind of sucks.”

For what it’s worth, the HMS Most Popular Driver was not alone in the last-lap disappointment.

A close shave with redemption

Brad Keselowski now sits at a winless streak of 60 races. This stat must have floated at the top of his mind in the final lap of the Daytona 500, when he was dominating the front row. The 2012 Cup Series champion had cultivated a superspeedway reputation in the past, with only the Daytona 500 eluding him. But he could not fulfill that wish even in 2026, as Riley Herbst blocked Keselowski’s path in the final lap.

As a result, the two cars collided and set off a massive crash, typical of superspeedway racing. And the RFK Racing team owner was left crestfallen, just like Chase Elliott.

“The 35 [Herbst] just wrecked me out of nowhere for no reason,” Brad Keselowski said. “That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. He had no chance of blocking my run. I had a huge run. I don’t know if I would have caught [Tyler Reddick] or [Ricky Stenhouse Jr.], but I would have liked to have found out, because my run was coming fast. And (Herbst) just wrecked us and himself. Pretty stupid.”

These high-strung emotions marked a wild start to the 2026 Cup Series season. As the year progresses, let’s see if the disappointed drivers can come back.