Unprecedented: How every Daytona 500 three-peat was derailed

Hendrick Motorsports is the winningest team in Daytona 500 history with ten victories. William Byron, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet, won the event in both 2024 and 2025, and both races ended in dramatic crashes amongst the race leaders. Now, he will attempt to win the 500 for a third consecutive year, and it’s a feat that has never been done before.

In 2024, Byron positioned himself out front, but Ross Chastain was charging fast on the outside as the field raced towards the white flag. Byron moved up to defend, and Chastain tried to shoot the gap up the middle between Byron and Austin Cindric. Well, Cindric and Chastain collided, sending both cars spinning as Byron escaped, taking the white flag with teammate Alex Bowman rapidly approaching along his right side. But just before Bowman completed the pass, the caution flew, the race was over, and Byron was a Daytona 500 victor.

One year later, Byron’s hopes of going back-to-back was looking improbable as he was fourth in line on the outside. But as the leaders began to jostle for position down the backstretch with only half-a-lap to go, they became entangled. A massive crash broke out, collecting every driver inside the top five. Byron narrowly skated through the melee on the far outside, beating Tyler Reddick to the line and becoming just the fifth driver in history to win back-to-back Daytona 500s. He was also just the second driver to do so in this century as the race has become more chaotic than ever before, joining Hamlin in that small club.

William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

Now, he eyes an even more exclusive club – one with zero members, for the moment. This race has existed since 1959, but never has a driver successfully won it three years consecutively.

The odds are against Byron, who starts 39th in a backup car for this year’s 500, but hey, the odds weren’t really in his favor ahead of his 2025 triumph either. The other four back-to-back Daytona 500 winners all failed in their attempt at the three-peat, and here’s how each of them came up short:

Denny Hamlin – Finished 5th after winning back-to-back in 2019/2020

Denny Hamlin pits during the 2021 Daytona 500

Hamlin is one of the best superspeedway racers in modern NASCAR, and was leading the race when they all crashed in front of Byron on the final lap of the 2025 Daytona 500. But even before that, he was already a three-time winner of the crown jewel event, including back-to-back wins in 2019 and 2020. Of every driver on this list, he was the closest to accomplishing the three-peat. No one else has placed higher than fifth as the back-to-back defending winner.

In 2021, Hamlin started 25th, but he had a rocket ship. He went on to lead 98 of 200 laps – almost half the race. With 28 laps to go, he pitted from the race lead with several Toyota allies in tow. But through the pit stop cycle, that group got shuffled to the back of a single-file line, and making forward progress at that point became a difficult task. He was up to ninth on the final lap, and narrowly avoided a race-ending crash that eliminated the race leaders. The caution flag waved as fire engulfed several wrecking cars, and Hamlin was scored in fifth place.

Sterling Marlin – Finished 40th after winning back-to-back in 1994/1995

Marlin practicing ahead of the 1996 Daytona 500

Marlin was near-unstoppable at superspeedways in the mid-90s, driving that iconic yellow Kodak No. 4 Larry McClure entry. He started third in his quest for the three-peat, and remained near the front for the first stint of the race. On Lap 77, he led the race for the first time, and led the next three laps until the unthinkable happened. While leading the race, the engine blew on his No. 4 machine, and he quickly fell through the field before limping back to the pits, ultimately retiring from the race in 40th place.

Cale Yarborough – Finished 36th after winning back-to-back in 1983/1984

Yarborough on the pace laps of the 1985 Daytona 500

Yarborough had already made history with another three-peat at this point in his career, as he was the first driver to ever win three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championships. In 1985, he started the 500 from the front row, and he led 32 of the first 60 laps. He was looking incredibly strong in his efforts to win three in-a-row. The race saw a slew of engine issues in the early running, and just like Marlin a decade later, mechanical gremlins were about to derail Yarborough’s pursuit of the three-peat. He fell back to second behind Bill Elliott, but suddenly began to slow on the frontstretch. He shook the car back-and-forth, made it back to the pits, but the team was unable to re-fire the car. He completed just 62 laps, finishing 36th.

Richard Petty – Finished 7th after winning back-to-back in 1973/1974

Petty en route to his 1974 Daytona 500 triumph

‘The King’ has more wins than any driver in NASCAR Cup Series history at 200, and far more Daytona 500 trophies too with seven. But even NASCAR’s most successful driver never pulled off a three-peat in the sport’s crown jewel event. Starting fourth in the 1975 edition of the race, the legendary STP No. 43 was unsurprisingly fast once again. He led 51 laps, but all that happened in the first half of the race. Just like Marlin and Yarborough, mechanical gremlins plagued his run. The engine was overheating, and the team actually ran a garden hose on it in an attempt to cool it down. He had to make several stops due to the overheating issue, which hindered his efforts the entire day and took him out of contention. Petty went on to finish seventh, he was eight full laps behind at the checkered flag, but gave race winner Benny Parsons a helpful draft across the finish line, and showed the world how fast he was when the car didn’t fail him.

While mechanical mishaps derailed three of Byron’s fellow back-to-back Daytona 500 winners, while a pit stop cycle hindered the other, it’s far more likely in a modern Daytona 500 to get wrecked before one can even think about hoisting that Harley J. Earl trophy. Byron himself is an example of that. Before winning back-to-back 500s, the driver of the No. 24 actually failed to finish inside the top 20 in his first six starts – mostly due to incidents. He recorded DNFs in 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023 due to incidents, while finishing the race with damage and several laps down in 2018 and 2021.

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