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. However, Richard Petty was eight laps behind the leaders on his way to finishing seventh, and Parsons hooked up in a draft and began reeling in Pearson who was slowed by lapped traffic. 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. Parsons avoided the accident and went on to take the win. One of the things that set up that incident late in the race that cost David Pearson the race was the fact that Cale Yarborough was running on 7 cylinders. On the final restart, Cale was actually placed in front of the leaders, on the end of the lead lap, but the power deficit he was at resulted in the leaders actually lapping him in less than 25 laps. When Pearson caught up to Yarborough and Richie Panch, Yarborough was trying to slip in behind Pearson and simply misjudged it. Of course, another was the role Richard Petty played. Even in a two-car draft with Ramo Stott, Benny Parsons was losing about a half to three-quarters of a second per lap to Pearson, who was simply content to draft A.J. Foyt to the win, but Foyt dropped out with nine laps left while running third, not long after Petty got back onto the track after his final pit stop, and where he came out was a stroke of luck for Parsons and Stott, because he came out exactly where they were running. 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. West Coast ace Hershel McGriff's third and final Daytona 500 ends with a blown motor on lap 13. Bruce Jacobi would debut in this race, finishing in 12th place after qualifying in 39th place. Among those involved were famous country music singerMarty Robbins, who also crashed out of the 1973 Daytona 500. At the time, it was the biggest crash in terms of the number of cars involved in race history. 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. Another that failed to finish was Buddy Baker, who led 46 laps. As a result, a record-low 14 cars, including that of Pearson, were classified as running at the finish. None of the 40 cars in this year's Daytona 500 had a single-digit car number.
