Hendrick Motorsports is the winningest team in Daytona 500 history with ten victories. William Byron, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet, won the event in both 2024 and 2025, and both races ended in dramatic crashes amongst the race leaders. He ended up eleven positions short of a historic three-peat in 2026, but he certainly had a shot at it.
This race has existed since 1959, and while five drivers including Byron have won it back-to-back, no one ever won it three years consecutively. Here's how each attempt ended...
William Byron -- Finished 12th after winning back-to-back in 2024/2025
Byron was mere inches away from being collected in end-of-race crashes to win the Daytona 500 in both 2024 and 2025. Before winning back-to-back 500s, the driver of the No. 24 actually failed to finish inside the top 20 in his first six starts – mostly due to incidents. He recorded DNFs in 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023 due to incidents, while finishing the race with damage and several laps down in 2018 and 2021.
In 2026, he started 39th in a backup car, and his adversity was far from over. He was involved in the first crash of the race, and the team had to work on it as the toe was bent on his HMS machine. Later, he tagged the wall again after an awkward push from Shane van Gisbergen, nearly spun off the nose of his teammate Kyle Larson after that, and got a small piece of the 20-car pileup at the end of Stage 2. So yeah, it was not smooth sailing. And despite all that, he still had a shot. At the white flag, Byron had driven up inside the top five, and was side-by-side with eventual race winner Tyler Reddick. They made some contact as a wreck broke out amongst the leaders entering Turn 1, and Byron ended up below the yellow line. He shot back up onto the track, but had lost all of his momentum and fell back to 12th.
Denny Hamlin – Finished 5th after winning back-to-back in 2019/2020
Hamlin is one of the best superspeedway racers in modern NASCAR, and was leading the race when they all crashed in front of Byron on the final lap of the 2025 Daytona 500. But even before that, he was already a three-time winner of the crown jewel event, including back-to-back wins in 2019 and 2020. Of every driver on this list, he was the closest to accomplishing the three-peat. No one else has placed higher than fifth as the back-to-back defending winner.
In 2021, Hamlin started 25th, but he had a rocket ship. He went on to lead 98 of 200 laps – almost half the race. With 28 laps to go, he pitted from the race lead with several Toyota allies in tow. But through the pit stop cycle, that group got shuffled to the back of a single-file line, and making forward progress at that point became a difficult task. He was up to ninth on the final lap, and narrowly avoided a race-ending crash that eliminated the race leaders. The caution flag waved as fire engulfed several wrecking cars, and Hamlin was scored in fifth place.
Sterling Marlin – Finished 40th after winning back-to-back in 1994/1995
Marlin was near-unstoppable at superspeedways in the mid-90s, driving that iconic yellow Kodak No. 4 Larry McClure entry. He started third in his quest for the three-peat, and remained near the front for the first stint of the race. On Lap 77, he led the race for the first time, and led the next three laps until the unthinkable happened. While leading the race, the engine blew on his No. 4 machine, and he quickly fell through the field before limping back to the pits, ultimately retiring from the race in 40th place.
Cale Yarborough – Finished 36th after winning back-to-back in 1983/1984
Yarborough had already made history with another three-peat at this point in his career, as he was the first driver to ever win three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championships. In 1985, he started the 500 from the front row, and he led 32 of the first 60 laps. He was looking incredibly strong in his efforts to win three in-a-row. The race saw a slew of engine issues in the early running, and just like Marlin a decade later, mechanical gremlins were about to derail Yarborough’s pursuit of the three-peat. He fell back to second behind Bill Elliott, but suddenly began to slow on the frontstretch. He shook the car back-and-forth, made it back to the pits, but the team was unable to re-fire the car. He completed just 62 laps, finishing 36th.
Richard Petty – Finished 7th after winning back-to-back in 1973/1974
‘The King’ has more wins than any driver in NASCAR Cup Series history at 200, and far more Daytona 500 trophies too with seven. But even NASCAR’s most successful driver never pulled off a three-peat in the sport’s crown jewel event. Starting fourth in the 1975 edition of the race, the legendary STP No. 43 was unsurprisingly fast once again. He led 51 laps, but all that happened in the first half of the race. Just like Marlin and Yarborough, mechanical gremlins plagued his run. The engine was overheating, and the team actually ran a garden hose on it in an attempt to cool it down. He had to make several stops due to the overheating issue, which hindered his efforts the entire day and took him out of contention. Petty went on to finish seventh, he was eight full laps behind at the checkered flag, but gave race winner Benny Parsons a helpful draft across the finish line, and showed the world how fast he was when the car didn’t fail him.
