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In Daytona International Speedway’s Victory Lane, with his trademarked smile beaming, global sports icon and 23XI Racing owner Michael Jordan took time out of his celebration to mention someone.
His first mention wasn’t Tyler Reddick, the winner of the 2026 Daytona 500.
It was someone who you don’t often hear about.
“I thought Riley did an unbelievable job by pushing at the end,” Jordan told the FOX Sports broadcast, his cheeks still wet with joyful tears. “That shows you what teamwork can really do. He doesn’t get enough credit. He won’t get enough credit. But we feel the love. We understand exactly what he did.”
On the contrary, it appears others in the garage have an idea of what Riley Herbst did, too.
Jordan was ostensibly referring to Herbst’s drafting on the backstretch of the final lap. Herbst, after all, is the fourth chartered car owned by Jordan and his 23XI Racing team, and Herbst, after avoiding the carnage on the high side of the track, maneuvered to the bottom, where Reddick was in fourth but in an optimal spot: the lead car on the inside line right with Turns 3 and 4 to go. Herbst gave Reddick a massive push, rewarding him the momentum that yielded him the race win.
But what did some of the others in the garage refer to? That’s what happened immediately afterward, with only a few hundred feet to the start-finish line to go. Herbst, it appeared, tried to block a surging Brad Keselowski on the outside and failed — which ultimately led to Herbst ramming his right-rear quarter panel into Keselowski’s nose, which turned Chase Elliott into the wall. A spinning Herbst collided with Joey Logano before the finish, too.
And … Keselowski wasn’t too happy about it.
“The 35 just wrecked me out of nowhere for no reason,” Keselowski said just outside the infield care center, his P5 finish not enough of a consolation considering how close he was to the former Cup champion’s first Daytona 500 title.
“That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen,” Keselowski continued. “He had no chance of blocking my run. I had a huge run. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten the 45 or 47, but I would’ve liked to have found out because my run was coming fast.
“And 35 just wrecked us and himself. Pretty stupid.”
Desperation on the final lap in the Daytona 500 regularly simmers. You could see it all day — in the good way. The race featured 65 lead changes and 25 different leaders while only seeing five cautions for 32 laps. Keselowski can acknowledge all of this. And the 42-year-old driver regularly does, in fact. Rarely is he so blunt.
But frustration boiled over Sunday.
“One-lane block kind of makes sense, but to block from the very bottom, all the way to the top? To wreck yourself and everybody else? It’s just stupid,” Keselowski said. “Very, very stupid.”
The others collected in the wreck shared their perspective post-race. Elliott, who finished P4, said that he threw one block on Reddick on the last lap, but he couldn’t throw a second without threatening to wreck the field.
“When those runs are coming at that rate of speed — and nobody’s lifting in that point in time — I just felt like I was going to get crashed if I tried to throw another move on him,” Elliott said. “I feel like the best play for me was the rerack and get one last shove to the line. But it was the 35, and he wasn’t going to push me.
“And then he winds up not pushing me, which in turn ended up crashing me anyway.”
Elliott laughed: “So maybe I should’ve just turned left and wrecked the first time.”
Herbst, outside his hauler, told FOX’s Bob Pockrass that on the frontstretch he was trying to go three-wide and have a “photo finish” for the Daytona 500.
“It must have been a matter of inches,” Herbst said. He added, “It’s fractions of a second. We’re trying to win the Daytona 500. Brad’s been trying to win for (17 years). He’ll tell you it’s a matter of inches. And we were on the wrong side of those inches.”
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Alex Zietlow
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