Freddie Kraft is not sure that NASCAR made the right call on not waiving the yellow flag during the final lap of the 2026 Daytona 500. On the Door Bumper Clear podcast, the spotter for Bubba Wallace shared his thoughts on NASCAR letting the race continue despite a multi-car wreck happening during the final lap of the race. He also had questions about what Kyle Busch did late in the race.
“I thought they needed to throw a yellow on the last lap,” Freddie Kraft said. “You go watch Kyle Busch’s in-car that somebody posted on Twitter, and I’m sure you could find it. He makes a weird decision, I think, to bail out with coming to two to go.”
Kraft then shared more on why NASCAR should have had the caution flag out during the final lap at Daytona. “The wreck happened for the lead, and then it got bigger, probably 10th on back,” he said. “You shouldn’t be asking your drivers to drive through an accident scene wide open in the Daytona 500. I can’t understand how that’s a good idea.”
The late wreck at the Daytona 500 led to a Tyler Reddick win
The wreck happened during the final 500 yards of the race, when Riley Herbst pushed 23XI Racing teammate Tyler Reddick to a win. During the push, Herbst made a late block on Brad Keselowski, and multiple cars got collected while sliding across the finish line.
That was the second wreck during the final lap. The first led to Chase Elliott having the lead before he was collected in the second wreck.
“Obviously, looking back, you can run it through your mind 1,000 times, do you do something different — I feel like if I had thrown a double block on the 45, probably would have just crashed us at that point in time,” Elliott said after the race. “I felt like you had to pick your battles. I thought maybe if somebody would pick me up on the top, you might have one more run to the line, but unfortunately ended up getting turned around.”