From the start, it appeared that David Pearson was on his way to his first Daytona 500 victory as he built a sizable lead on second place Benny Parsons late in the race.

The key moment of the race occurred two laps from the end when contact with Cale Yarborough in traffic sent Pearson spinning on the backstretch.

[2] One of the things that set up the late incident that cost David Pearson the race was that Cale Yarborough was running on 7 cylinders.

[2] As per the list below, 26 of the 40 drivers failed to finish the race for various reasons, including a huge crash on the fourth lap, which took out nine cars, nearly one-quarter of the field.

Donnie Allison started on the pole, but only led the first lap and was sidelined by mechanical problems, as was DiGard Racing teammate Johnny Rutherford, the reigning Indianapolis 500 champion.