Harrison Burton entered Saturday night's NASCAR Cup Series race at Daytona 34th in points, nearly 550 behind leader Tyler Reddick. He'd been fired from his job at the Wood Brothers, effective the end of the season, and hadn't so much as sniffed the top five in two years.
To say he'd be a Cinderella story would insinuate Cinderella would actually give him the time of day. And yet, here we are, 24 hours after a wild weekend that ended with Burton sitting in victory lane, playoff spot in hand.
It's the upside of NASCAR's postseason system that a guy who spent all year out to lunch suddenly gets to steal one with a wild overtime push to victory. It was a moment made even sweeter as Harrison's dad, Jeff, called the race from the NBC Sports booth.
And by "calling," it meant Burton stayed in the background, trying to avoid the type of bias we've seen from relatives in the NASCAR booth before (think Ned Jarrett calling son Dale to a 1993 Daytona 500 win).
"Did you call it or were you quiet?" Harrison asked his dad in the media center after the race. "He was quiet. I won a [NASCAR] Xfinity race and he didn't say a dang word except he felt bad for Noah (Gragson) that I passed him on the last lap. What is that, dude? You can be excited. It's OK (laughter)."
The younger Burton had no problem showing his emotions, crying all the way through the cooldown lap. But the way he laid waste to the field in these final two laps left everyone else in tears. He was overlooked as two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch positioned himself in front, ready to end a career-worst 45-race winless streak.
Behind him, Busch had a pseudo teammate in little-known Parker Retzlaff, making just his second career Cup Series start with a part-time team. Conventional wisdom was the rookie driving the No. 62 Beard Motorsports Chevrolet would leave Burton's Ford out to dry. The spotter even yelled to Retzlaff not to help.
Instead, the two became locked together in a bullet train toward the front. By the time Busch looked back and saw the challenge, it was already too late.
"The outside lane just went by," Busch explained. "I wanted to get up in front of the No. 21 (Burton) because I knew the momentum was coming there. But I knew the No. 20 (Christopher Bell, three wins this year) was a better friend. It just didn't work out."
Busch's loss became Burton's gain, a 23-year-old headed to the unemployment line given a shot at a championship instead. It was the landmark 100th win for his single-car Wood Brothers team, their first since 2017 as the very same principals who let Burton go found themselves turning around to sing his praises.
"Harrison is a type of kid, when you see him, you want to hug him," team CEO Eddie Wood said. "He's just a good kid. He's like the rest of us. He's been beat up lately."
There's good reason for that. Heading into last night, Burton had gone 14 races without a top-10 finish. He'd crashed out of three of the last five races. Even at Daytona, Burton led just a single lap, giving him only 13 laps led on the year.
Lucky for him, it's the one that really matters.
"The way the last three years have gone," Burton added, "Has not been the way I wanted to represent myself, the way I wanted to represent this team.
"Then to have the kind of walls closing in on there's a different end to my time to get to drive this historic car, then to find a way to win while those walls are kind of closing in, to me is really, really special.
"It almost makes the last three years worth it."
Traffic Report
Green: Parker Retzlaff. Seventh in just your second Cup race? Influencing the win on the last lap with a car that runs just a handful of races a year? This NASCAR Xfinity Series prospect (18th in points with Jordan Anderson's team) will take a night that got him noticed on a national level.
To his credit? Retzlaff wanted even more. "To come so close," he said afterward, "and not get it just hurts a little bit."
Yellow: Playoff bubble drivers. Ty Gibbs, Bubba Wallace, Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain: all of them fought adversity to fight their way inside the top 12. All but Gibbs fought back from wrecks that left them heavily damaged, in some cases a lap off the pace.
And in the end? They all still lost with Burton pulling a gargantuan upset. The bubble squeezes further and now two of those four will lose out on the playoffs (at least) after Sunday's regular-season finale at Darlington.
Red: Ryan Preece. Preece, like Burton, is in need of a new ride for 2025. Unlike Burton, the former Modified star is continuing to dig himself a hole: an early wreck left him 39th, the third DNF in his last five races during a year he's failed to lead a single lap.
Speeding Ticket: Cars on their roof. No, it's not a misprint. For the second straight week, NASCAR is dealing with safety questions after one of their Next Gen cars flipped over.
This time, Josh Berry's ride was even scarier. Turned on the backstretch, his No. 4 Ford not only landed upside down but smashed hard into the inside wall, leaving the driver thrown forward in the cockpit at well over 100 miles an hour.
Berry emerged unscathed, claiming the hit could have been worse had Daytona not made a recent change to add extra asphalt on the backstretch.
"Paving that section helped keep me from really barrel rolling," Berry explained. "As bad as it looked, they made a big improvement."
The real improvement will come when these cars finish wrecking right side up. Even their new fin wasn't enough to keep Berry on the ground.
Oops!
There were not one but two major multi-car Daytona wrecks, the last one nearly leaving pole sitter Michael McDowell upside down, too. A bad bump from fellow Ford driver Austin Cindric sent McDowell flying, his playoff hopes evaporating while getting bodyslammed at the front of the field.
The incident left a normally mild-mannered McDowell stressing over what might have been.
"Lord knows that I've made plenty of mistakes at superspeedways," he said. "And I want to make sure it wasn't me. But I felt like I got turned getting down into turn one."
Cindric had a different view, even after he got spun out himself in a separate incident.
"I was trying to back out of the gas and not run over the 34," he explained. "I'm not sure he knew what lane he wanted to be in, but between that and how we got turned from the lead, it's just how it goes."