DAYTONA BEACH, Florida: Eli Tomac held off a charging Hunter Lawrence at Daytona International Speedway to win for an eighth time at the famed track. This was his fourth win of the season.
Tomac’s previous record of seven wins has been compared to Richard Petty’s record in the Daytona 500 and after missing last year to injury and finishing second to Jett Lawrence in 2024, he’s heard that too many times.
“Well it’s nice to beat him,” Tomac said succinctly in the post-race media scrum.
With eight wins at one venue, Tomac to second on that list, but as noted earlier in the week, the other eight time winners all scored their victories at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, which hosts multiple events each season.
“Yeah, I’m just counting my blessings to get eight here,” Tomac said. “It is hard to believe. So count my blessings on that. ... Eight is Great.”
Lawrence closed the gap on Tomac by three seconds in the final five minutes before settling into second. He retained the red plate by one point as the series crests the halfway point.
“I felt like I spent the whole first 15 minutes compensating for the bike and figuring where it’s kicking and stuff like that and where it’s washing. It’s already a tough track and then you have to compensate.”
Ken Roczen earned the holeshot and held on to take the final place on the podium.
“I know that points wise, I can’t let these guys be in front of me all the time,” Roczen commented. “Having said that, it’s a good thing that Eli won and Hunter was second so I only lost a couple of points overall, but I’m going to have to get on that, try to change something.”
His third-place finish elevated Roczen into a tie for third in the championship standings with Cooper Webb. They are 20 points behind Lawrence and 19 behind Tomac.
Fourth-place Webb and Joey Savatgy rounded out the top five.
After falling to 21st with an early-race crash, Justin Cooper recovered to finish 12th.
In Race Notes
Roczen got the early lead from Lawrence as Tomac was slow to launch in fifth.
Tomac wasn’t discouraged by his slow start, however. He moved into third on Lap 2.
Webb was fourth at the time with Malcolm Stewart rounding out the top five.
Tomac closed in on Lawrence on Lap 3 as Roczen stretched his lead to nearly three seconds.
Cooper crashed on Lap 3 and dropped to 21st. Dylan Ferrandis retired after recording strong results in the preliminaries.
Tomac moved into second on Lap 5. He was 1.2 seconds behind Roczen.
It took only one more lap for Tomac to take the lead from Roczen.
On Lap 7, Tomac had a 1.7-second lead on Roczen, but more importantly, the points leader, Lawrence was 3.1 seconds behind.
Savatgy moved into fifth on that same lap.
Aaron Plessinger was just outside the top five in sixth as Marchbanks faded to seventh.
Lawrence caught Roczen on Lap 10. He can’t afford to lose very many points if he wants to keep the red plate.
Lawrence took second on Lap 11. That moved Roczen back to third. Webb was a distant fourth, six seconds behind Roczen.
On Lap 14, Tomac extended his lead to more than four seconds over Lawrence.
Tomac paced himself in the closing laps and scored his eighth Daytona win by 1.3 seconds over Lawrence.
