NASCAR insider wants answers after Riley Herbst-Brad Keselowski Daytona 500 wreck, call out

Tyler Reddick took the checkered flag in the Daytona 500 on Sunday, snapping a 38-race winless streak. But what if his 23XI Racing teammate, Riley Herbst, had not cut off Brad Keselowski on the outside roughly 100 yards from the start-finish line?

Herbst, who said after the race he dashed to the outside in an effort to win the race himself, slammed into a hard-charging Keselowski and caused a multi-car wreck, allowing Reddick to win the Great American Race without a battle. Jeff Gluck of The Athletic wonders what might have been for Keselowski, who fell short of winning his first career Daytona 500 in his 17th attempt.

“What I would like to know is if that wreck doesn’t happen, if Riley Herbst doesn’t hang a right or even if he does, but he doesn’t get into Keselowski and it’s gonna be a drag race to the line, I was trying to go back and really slow down the video, like, did Tyler Reddick really have enough momentum to make it to the line and pass Chase Elliott and maybe pass Brad Keselowski on the outside?” Gluck said on The Teardown. “Or were they gonna catch him and if not for Riley Herbst taking out the rest of the top five cars, were one of those guys gonna catch up to Reddick, because there was a long way left, maybe 100 yards left.

“I’d be very curious because I think Keselowski might have won that race. He [Elliott] and Reddick would have sucked the air off of each other and done aero stuff while Keselowski came on the outside, and I think he had a push, too.”

Brad Keselowski wasn’t happy with Riley Herbst after Daytona 500

Keselowski shared the same sentiment as Gluck. He was perplexed with Herbst’s decision making, calling it “one of the dumbest things I have ever seen.”

“The 35 [Herbst] just wrecked me out of nowhere for no reason,” Keselowski told John Newby of Savage Ventures. “That was one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. He had no chance of blocking my run. I had a huge run — I don’t know if I could have gotten to the 45, but I would have liked to have found out because my run was coming fast and the 35 just wrecked us and himself. Pretty stupid.”

Herbst, like Keselowski, was going for the win. He called it a “matter of inches” in attempting to make it three-wide at the finish in his response to Keselowski.

“I went to pop three-wide to make it a photo finish, and it must have been a matter of inches,” Herbst told Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “… I wasn’t trying to make a move to go to second. … It’s fractions of a second. We’re trying to win the Daytona 500. [Brad] will tell you it’s a matter of inches and we were on the wrong side of inches.”

Keselowski was officially scored with a fifth-place finish. Herbst, meanwhile, finished a career best eighth.