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Riley Herbst Explains His Late Race Daytona 500 Decisions, Brad Keselowski Calls It “One Of The Dumbest Things I’ve Ever Seen”

February 16, 2026  ·
  John Trent

Riley Herbst explained his late race moves that secured the Daytona 500 win for his teammate Tyler Reddick and car owners Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin.

On the final lap of the race, most of the field wrecked after leader Carson Hocevar spun off the nose of Erik Jones. The wreck collected Michael McDowell and caused John Hunter Nemechek to spin further in the field collecting even more cars including Cole Custer and Ryan Blaney.

The race stayed greed and there were only about eight cars left to race for the win: Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Zane Smith, Joey Logano, Riley Herbst, Brad Keselowski, and Chris Buescher.

Coming to the line, Chase Elliott had the lead with Zane Smith pushing him in second. Tyler Reddick, who was in third, drove to the outside of Smith with Herbst following him. Elliott tried to block the run, but Reddick dove underneath him. Meanwhile, Keselowski moved to the outside with a big push from Logano and Stenhouse. Herbst then jumped to the top and smashed Keselowski into the wall and then bounced back down and collected Elliott. It allowed Reddick to cross the finish line unchallenged.

Herbst explained his moves to Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass, “They said there’s no caution, so we got all spread out wide down the back straightaway. Obviously, I chose to go with the [Tyler Reddick]. Pushed him and he made that move on [Chase Elliott] to go side by side. I don’t know truly what happened. I went to pop three-wide and make it a photo finish top of three at the start/finish line. It must have been a matter of inches.”

 “I wasn’t trying to make a move to go to second,” Herbst added. “It’s fractions of a second. We’re trying to win the Daytona 500. Brad’s been trying to win, you would know how many year’s it’s been, 17. He’ll tell you it’s matter of inches and we were on the wrong side of inches.”

Keselowski, for his part, was none to pleased with Herbst’s move, “[Riley Herbst] just wrecked me out of nowhere for no reason. That was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. he had no chance of blocking my run. I don’t know if I could have gotten [Tyler Reddick], but I would’ve liked to have found because my run was coming fast and [Herbst] just wrecked us and himself. Pretty stupid.”

He reiterated, “I thought one lap block kinda makes sense, but to block from the very bottom all the way to the top and wreck yourself and everybody else is just stupid. Very, very stupid.”

Chase Elliott also shared his thoughts with Kelly Crandall, “I just felt like I was going to get crashed if I had tried throw another move on [Tyler Reddick]. And I felt like the best play for me was try to rerack and get one last shove to the line, but it was [Herbst] and he wasn’t going to push me. Then he winds up crashing himself not pushing me, which then in turn crashed me anyway. So maybe I should have just turned left and wrecked the first time.”

NEXT: Jeremy Mayfield Trashes Daytona 500 Finish: “The Trophy Is Losing Its Meaning”

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Author: John Trent