Contested over 75 laps, it was the first exhibition race of the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.

The 2017 Clash at Daytona will not be a predetermined number of cars; rather, the field is limited to drivers who meet more exclusive criteria.

[9] Brad Keselowski led the field to the green flag at 11:35 a.m. under mostly sunny skies, after it was postponed from the night before.

[10] The field wasted little time packing together to form multiple lines of three-wide racing.

It's kind of a shame — all of the hard work and the effort everybody puts into the off-season — Doug Yates and his engines and everybody from Ford and everybody at Stewart-Haas, all of the effort put towards building a car and we didn't even make it to the first pit stop, so it's kind of a bummer.”[12] He was credited with finishing last.

Contrary to the two runs in the first segment, this run featured a three-car breakaway in the lead (Hamlin, Daniel Suárez and Matt Kenseth) that became a seven-car breakaway (joined by Logano, Jamie McMurray, Truex and Austin Dillon).

Exiting Turn 4, Johnson broke loose a second time, slid down the track and slammed the inside wall head-on.

[14] He described both incidents as "bizarre because it drove really good everywhere else, then off of (Turn) 4 the first time I had a handling problem was when it broke free and I got into the No.

After that caution and the last long stretch before I crashed again, just off of Turn 4, the Sun certainly sits on that edge of the track a little bit harder than anywhere else.

The Gibbs Toyotas controlled the lead, a viable outside line wasn't forming and the field was virtually single-file with five to go.

[17] Hamlin made a poorly-timed move down to block, caught himself on Keselowski's nose and got turned sideways.

We were able to get a good enough run to work together enough to break them up and make the passes, and then there at the end, it was kind of a mess.

We lined up so well as Toyota teammates throughout the race that once those guys started breaking that up and leap frogging, he (Keselowski) had commitment from the 22 and the 4 and when they were able to back up there that really put us at a speed differential.”[22] FS1 covered the race on the television side, Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Gordon handled the call in the booth for the race, Matt Yocum, Jamie Little, Chris Neville and Vince Welch handled pit road for the television side.