Burton Breaks Through For Wood Brothers’ 100th Cup Win

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – On the final lap of Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona Int’l Speedway, Harrison Burton found a bit of the Wood Brothers’ longtime magic.

With a drive to the front reminiscent of Hall of Famers of decades past, Burton powered around Kyle Busch in overtime and led back to the checkered flag to capture a stunning first career victory in the NASCAR Cup Series.

After escaping a crash on the backstretch with two laps left in regulation and lining up on the front row for the extra distance, Burton started the final lap in second but found a huge push in the draft from rookie Parker Retzlaff down the Daytona Superstretch.

The shot of momentum propelled Burton clear to the lead in turn three, and he defended the position all the way home in the iconic No. 21 DEX Imaging/Motorcraft Ford Mustang Dark Horse.

Burton’s breakthrough victory came in his 98th Cup Series start. It was also the milestone 100th victory for Wood Brothers Racing, NASCAR’s longest-tenured team which dates back to the early 1950s.

Making the moment even more special, Burton’s father – NASCAR on NBC analyst Jeff Burton – was in the broadcast booth to help call his son home under the Daytona floodlights.

What followed was an outpouring of emotion for a driver who has, arguably, been to hell and back in his three seasons at NASCAR’s top level – but found his ray of light Saturday at the World Center of Racing.

“I cried for the whole cool down lap,” said a tearful Burton after climbing from his car. “This has been the hardest three years of my life; there’s no denying it’s been rough, but these guys have rallied behind me when it matters the most.

“We’ve gone to every single race with the same mentality of trying to win, because we knew we could get [win] number 100 for the team,” he added. “We kept saying in our meetings that we had a chance to get No. 100 for the Wood Brothers and that’s something that you can’t take lightly. And as a group, we have that place in history now forever.

“To me, that just means the world.”

Burton led only the final lap in winning Daytona’s annual 400-mile summer spectacular. It also catapulted him from 34th in the standings into the 16-driver playoff field in the eleventh-hour of the regular season.

“We have a chance to be in the playoffs and do something now, so we’re not going to roll over and die, by any means,” Burton assured. “We’ve had a rough year, but this is the shot in the arm we’ve needed and we’re going to go to Darlington set on kill and then see what we can make out of our playoff shot.”

Two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch, with no recourse into the playoffs except for a victory, was in front at the white flag before Burton’s run up the outside overhauled his No. 8 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.

It left Busch with a gutting second-place finish that, while it was his best result this year, wasn’t what he and crew chief Randall Burnett hoped for when they lined up out front for the final restart.

“Just finished second. It’s all good,” Busch noted. “We were really, really, really lucky tonight to miss a few of those crashes. All the guys at RCR and ECR did a great job; we brought a fast car. Just wasn’t meant to be.”

Bell crossed the line third after banging doors with Retzlaff in the final 200 yards, followed by Cody Ware, who posted a career-best Cup Series finish in fourth.

Ty Gibbs was fifth, followed by Bubba Wallace and Retzlaff, who scrubbed the wall after the contact with Bell and faded to seventh right at the flagstand.

Brad Keselowski, Daniel Hemric, and Chris Buescher closed out the top 10.

Josh Berry and Joey Logano won stage one and stage two, but were eliminated in back-to-back crashes inside the final 10 laps of regulation.

Logano was eliminated on lap 152, when then-leader Michael McDowell was turned down the turn-one banking in front of the field. When McDowell’s Ford came across Logano’s front bumper, the No. 22 Ford t-boned McDowell’s car and sent it halfway over before the latter came back down on all four wheels.

The pair combined to lead 60 laps Saturday night, with Logano out front nine times for 34 laps and McDowell pacing the field three times for 26 circuits, including the first five from the pole position.

Berry’s night came to an end in a scary crash with two to go in regulation, when he and Austin Cindric tangled on the backstretch while racing for the lead. Berry’s No. 4 Ford spun around rapidly and flipped onto its roof, sliding along the paved runoff before pounding the inside wall nose-first, still on its lid.

Luckily, after the AMR Safety Team righted the car on its wheels, Berry was able to climb out uninjured.

That crash necessitated a six-minute, 52-second red flag for cleanup and led to the wild overtime finish that ensued.

In all, 16 drivers exchanged the lead 40 times, with seven cautions slowing the pace for 34 laps. The race was completed in three hours, one minute, and 40 seconds at an average speed of 135.413 mph.

With one race remaining before the start of the playoffs, the NASCAR Cup Series concludes the regular season Sunday night, Sept. 1 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway with the 75th Cook Out Southern 500.

Broadcast coverage at the Track Too Tough to Tame is slated for 7:30 p.m. ET, live on NBC, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.