Here For The Speed

Christopher Bell used fresh tires to pass Kyle Larson and win the 2026 Southern 500, ending a 33-race winless streak in the Chase opener. Excerpt: Christopher Bell chased down Kyle Larson on fresh tires to win the Southern 500 and move within 12 points of the Chase lead.

Daytona's new Cup Series package wasn't perfect. Good. NASCAR should build on what worked instead of chasing a version of superspeedway racing that probably doesn't exist. Here's our biggest takeaway after watching the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona: NASCAR needs to stop trying to make superspeedway racing perfect. It isn't going to happen. There will be fuel saving. There will be stretches where drivers ride in line. There will be questionable blocks, bad decisions and wreck

Ryan Preece stole the final Chase position, Daniel Suárez nearly stole the victory and Shane van Gisbergen watched a 31-point advantage disappear. Daytona changed a lot of seasons in one night. Daytona doesn't care about your plans. That's probably the easiest way to describe what happened in the Coke Zero Sugar 400. Some drivers arrived simply looking for momentum before The Chase. Others needed everything to go right just to keep their championship hopes alive. Then the gre

NASCAR came to Daytona with a dramatically different superspeedway package and a clear objective: give drivers more opportunities to pass. After watching its first race in person, we think they might be onto something. Superspeedway racing has developed a strange problem over the last several years. Daytona and Talladega are supposed to be places where track position can change in an instant, where drivers can build runs in the draft and where being aggressive can take you fr

Ryan Preece spent years fighting for opportunities in NASCAR. At Daytona, with his season on the line, he finally got the breakthrough he had been chasing. There may not have been a more fitting place for Ryan Preece to earn his first points-paying NASCAR Cup Series victory than Daytona International Speedway. Daytona has given Preece some of the most frightening moments of his career, and he arrived for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 facing another daunting challenge. This time it