By David Morgan, Associate Editor
TALLADEGA, Ala. – It has been a long wait for Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. to make his return to Victory Lane in a NASCAR Cup Series race, but he’ll have to wait no longer after Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Despite starting back in 32nd place, Stenhouse channeled his previous superspeedway luck in working his way forward, finishing the first stage in second-place and hanging around in the lead pack for much of the day until it came down to go time.
After battling with Austin Cindric in the late stages of the race, with the two trading the lead back and forth, Stenhouse was able to come away with superficial damage to his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Chevrolet and asserted himself as the driver to beat when the 24-car melee brought out the red flag and pushed the race into overtime.
Lining up against another superspeedway ace in Brad Keselowski for the overtime restart, Stenhouse used a push from William Byron to hold steady with the six-time Talladega winner for almost the entirety of overtime.
One final shove from Byron entering the tri-oval for the final time was all he needed to get clear of Keselowski as they stormed toward the checkered. Both Keselowski and Byron would fan out on either side of Stenhouse at the line, but the Olive Branch, Miss. Native had enough momentum to edge out ahead of them both.
The margin of victory would be 0.006 seconds to break Stenhouse’s 65-race winless streak dating back to the 2023 Daytona 500.
“It felt really good. We had our Chevy teammates behind us, and I was hoping Kyle wasn’t going to push the 6 that hard. I knew the 24 was probably going to try and get to the line there,” said Stenhouse.
“But, man, this team has put a lot of hard work in. Obviously, we haven’t won since the 500 in ’23. It’s been an up-and-down season.
“It was a lot of hard work this season just trying to find a little bit of speed, but we knew that this track is one of ours to come get. So, for all of our Mississippi people, appreciate you all coming. This means a lot, winning here.”
Keselowski would finish as the runner-up for the second time this season at Talladega, with Byron finishing the race in third, accumulating enough points to lock himself into the Round of 8 ahead of next Sunday’s elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
“(Larson) gave me a good push down the frontstrech, but the 24 was able to really stick with the 47 there and just needed a tiny bit,” Keselowski said. “It’s a good finish for us. We’ve been knocking on the door of these plate tracks. I hate that we didn’t bust through with a win, but I’m happy to be right there in contention.”
Byron noted afterwards that he elected to play the good soldier in the Chevrolet camp in overtime, pushing Stenhouse instead of trying to jump out of line and hurt his finish.
“I didn’t have a chance to get the lead myself on the last lap, so that was the thought process,” Byron said. “I just couldn’t quite get him clear into (turn) three, or he didn’t take it into three. And then, I just kind of had to be diligent to push him the rest of the way. I felt like it all worked out.
“I’m happy for Ricky (Stenhouse Jr.) and everyone at Chevrolet. They deserve it. Ricky is a really good drafter.”
Larson would finish the day in fourth-place, equaling his previous career-best finish at Talladega, followed by Erik Jones to round out the top-five finishers.
The remainder of the top-10 went to Christopher Bell, Justin Haley, Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace, and Denny Hamlin.
Hamlin in particular finally found some luck on the superspeedways, taking advantage of the Lap 185 multi-car crash to vault himself from outside the top-20 to a top-10 finish, giving himself a 30-point advantage over the cut-off line heading to the Round of 12 elimination race at Charlotte.
“We were screwed,” Hamlin said of his points position prior to the crash.
“I feel better about it, no doubt about it. If you would’ve told me we’d be where we’re at, kind of going into next week, I would’ve taken it. So, I can’t complain about too much.
“Certainly, I wish our FedEx One Rate Toyota was not as damaged as it was and we could have contended for win, but it just wasn’t to be after that Blaney wreck. We made the most of our day, which is all you can ask for.”
Playoff Pandemonium
The rest of the Playoff drivers would finish the day scattered throughout the running order with Alex Bowman being the best of the rest in 16th place. Regular season champion Tyler Reddick came home in 20th, with the others finishing from 26th on back.
Daniel Suarez was involved in the first caution of the day, spinning on Lap 13 as he was getting swallowed by the pack and lapped after serving a pass-through penalty to start the race. He never found himself in the free pass position, but with the carnage of the crash at the end of regulation was able to make up a handful of spots to finish in 26th.
Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe were also involved in the Lap 185 crash, finishing 29th and 30th, along with the Team Penske duo of Austin Cindric and Joey Logano in 32nd and 33rd.
The crash that involved eight of the Playoff drivers on Lap 185 started as the field was bumping on the backstretch, eventually leading to a bump from Keselowski to Cindric that sent him spinning into the oncoming pack, creating a junkyard from the backstretch into Turn 3 that caused the red flag that stretched nearly nine minutes.
“The front of the pack got shuffled up from the 38 basically splitting the whole field, which definitely caused some congestion with guys getting out of lanes and obviously an off-center push from the 6 and that’s it for our race,” Cindric said.
“We had an exceptionally fast race car. It was A-plus execution by everyone on the 2 car, so I’m proud of the effort but definitely a bummer to be that close to punching our ticket.”
Keselowski said much of the same regarding his involvement in the crash that triggered the backstretch pileup.
“It was just an interesting sequence of events,” said Keselowski. “The 38 car came. He was a slow car for whatever reason, I don’t know, and he stayed on the bottom and we had the Ford train pulling the bottom and when he did that it broke us all up and when we rubberbanded back together it just snapped.
“It’s a tough deal. I was getting pushed from behind and I ran into the 2 car and he spun out. It just wasn’t a good sequence of events for all of us.”
Defending series champion Ryan Blaney finished in 39th after getting wiped out in a crash at the end of the second stage, once again a bump draft gone wrong as a shot from Bowman to Blaney sent him up the track, collecting Ross Chastain in the process.
Logano, Shane van Gisbergen, Hamlin, and Corey LaJoie would also get a piece of the accident.
“I don’t know if he ever lifted and just drilled me from like three car lengths back. The worst possible spot you could do it, so it’s pretty dumb on his part and it figures that he gets away scot free per usual. That’s the end of the day,” Blaney said of the crash and the bump from Bowman.
“We were probably still gonna run fifth or sixth, and then the 48 just drove straight through me in the tri-oval. He just wrecked the f*** out of me. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
Bowman, to his credit, took the blame for the incident after climbing from his car after the race.
“Just overall kind of disappointed in myself,” said Bowman. “I made the wrong move a lot, and I crashed [Blaney] with just a crappy push. Obviously just trying to push him to try and help our lane for the Stage and just hit him in the wrong spot. I hate that I did that.”
Heading to the final race of the Round of 12 next Sunday at Charlotte, Byron is the only Playoff driver locked into the next round, followed by Bell (+57), Larson (+52), Hamlin (+30), Bowman (+26), Blaney (+25), Reddick (+14), and Elliott (+13) as the eight drivers currently on the positive side of the cut-off line.
The four drivers leaving Talladega currently in danger of being eliminated are Logano (-13), Suarez (-20), Cindric (-29), and Briscoe (-32).
Connect with Us
To RSS Feed
Followers
Likes