After tackling the high banks of Talladega Superspeedway, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series next contests the short-track confines of Martinsville Speedway on Saturday (4 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The race will act as the eighth of nine Chase presented by Mobil 1 contests and the 32nd points-paying event overall. Taylor Gray is the defending Martinsville fall winner.
Jesse Love, the defending O’Reilly champion and current Chase points leader, holds a 19-point edge over 2024 O’Reilly champion Justin Allgaier in the title table following Sammy Smith’s Talladega Superspeedway victory. The No. 7 JR Motorsports pilot in Allgaier will look to continue momentum in the right direction at Martinsville, with two career wins at “The Paperclip” to go along with eight top fives and 10 top 10s in 12 career O’Reilly races there.
Five O’Reilly Series Chase drivers have been eliminated ahead of Martinsville: Gray, Austin Hill, Brandon Jones, Parker Retzlaff and Rajah Caruth.
Thirty-eight race cars are entered into Saturday’s event.
The penultimate NASCAR Cup Series race is upon us, with the sport’s premier circuit next contesting Martinsville Speedway on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The Xfinity 500 will act as the ninth of 10 races encompassing The Chase presented by Mobil 1 and the 35th points-paying event of the season. William Byron is the defending Martinsville fall victor.
Kyle Larson, Byron’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, captured the Talladega Superspeedway victory to expand his Chase lead to 73 points. The No. 5 Hendrick pilot and defending Cup Series champion has eyes on clinching the title at “The Paperclip,” and with strong numbers at the short track — including a race win in 2023 — the possibility is there for Larson to clinch his third career Cup Series title.
Nine Cup Series Chasers have been eliminated from title contention ahead of Martinsville: Austin Cindric, Ty Gibbs, Carson Hocevar, Byron, Chase Elliott, Bubba Wallace, Daniel Suárez, Ryan Preece and Chris Buescher.
Thirty-seven race cars are entered into Sunday’s event.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series treks from Talladega Superspeedway to Martinsville Speedway, with the circuit next contesting “The Paperclip” on Friday (6 p.m. ET, FS1, FOX One, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The 200-lap race at the famed short-track will be the sixth of seven races making up this year’s Chase presented by Mobil 1 and the 24th points-paying event overall.
Following Sammy Smith’s Talladega Superspeedway win, Kaden Honeycutt, driver of the No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota, leads The Chase standings by 43 points over Layne Riggs and the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports camp. Next up is Martinsville, where each driver will look to capture their first career Truck win at the short track and make their title case.
Five Truck Series Chase drivers have been eliminated from championship contention ahead of Martinsville: Gio Ruggiero, Daniel Hemric, Ben Rhodes, Tyler Ankrum and Grant Enfinger.
Thirty-six race trucks are entered into Friday’s event.
TALLADEGA, Ala. — How? How exactly does Kyle Larson, a driver with a notable 0-for-23 career mark at Talladega and fresh from last week’s flub at Phoenix, turn in a masterful stroke of superspeedway wizardry, sinking like a stone with half a lap to go in overtime only to power back with an Earnhardt-esque charge that electrified the track’s rabid crowd?
It was an afternoon when nearly everything went according to plan, when the fates of so many other would-be championship contenders went sideways, wrong-ways or upside-down. And it seemed like that plan was about to unravel almost as spectacularly with a little more than a mile left. Somehow, some way, Larson summoned the ability to press ahead, emerging from the 11th-place ashes in the final two turns to flash across the finish line in first, just 0.041 seconds clear of teammate William Byron.
Larson had just blown the NASCAR Cup Series Chase wide open. In the immediate aftermath, he chalked it up to good fortune.
“I [expletive] choked it away so bad, though,” Larson said on the cool-down lap. “I got lucky.”
“It’s all right. All right,” said No. 5 spotter Tyler Monn. “Better to be lucky than good.”
Larson was more good than he let on in Sunday’s YellaWood 500, capitalizing and maximizing while the rest of the Cup Series championship hopefuls endured a day of stepping on rakes. Larson’s title defense now has a staggering 73-point advantage with two races left in the season, both at favorable tracks coming up at Martinsville Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway.
A Phoenix collapse by Larson & Co. had tightened The Chase presented by Mobil 1, shrinking his lead to just five points and making the postseason pursuit a seven-horse race. Now The Chase has Larson as a front-running outlier versus the more-distant field, with a chance to close it out at Martinsville in Sunday’s Xfinity 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“Only took us six years together,” Monn said on the cool-down lap, after Larson finally filled a 58-race void on drafting tracks and shook the long-running knock on his otherwise peerless portfolio. On a weekend when the 20th anniversary of “Talladega Nights” was celebrated around the namesake venue, the two-time Cup champ borrowed a quotable line from the film and truthfully had slingshot engaged.
“I felt like Dale Jr. out there with half the field kind of helping me,” Larson said post-race, noting the daylong show of Chevrolet solidarity and getting an Earnhardt-style rise out of the grandstand crowd.
That Chevrolet kinship only lasted so long, though, and after the white flag unfurled, each driver’s agendas turned more to me-first. Austin Hill’s No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevy had faithfully pushed Larson’s No. 5 out front, but dove to the low side exiting Turn 2, shucking the points leader into the middle lane and starting his last-lap decline.
Larson plummeted outside of the top 10 before suddenly regaining his groove. He finally found drafting support from Ross Chastain’s No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Camaro and steadily advanced in the low lane while the front of the pack duked it out with blocks and swerves.
“It was just full of surprise,” Larson said. “Like, there wasn’t anything special that I did. I didn’t really think on the last lap. It was honestly, like, more mistakes than anything that got me in that scenario. I don’t know. Maybe it was just meant to be and the mistake opened up the opportunity for me. Who knows how the race would have played out if I been leading my lane, not being put in the middle? Who knows? I might not have won, I might have crashed. It worked out how it was supposed to work out.”
“To be honest with you, off of Turn 2, I really thought that we were done,” Monn told NASCAR.com from Victory Lane, noting how Hill’s low-side parry broke Larson’s momentum. “… We just kept plugging middle, then got down to the bottom, just had a big run, and guys were all over the place. I think it just slowed the run up, and yeah, it was crazy just how big of a run we had down the front, and being able to get down to the bottom.
“Man, I’d have to watch the replay back, but just re-living through my head right now, I mean, it was unreal. Yeah, it was a great day overall. … Tohaveashotatitattheendwasprettyphenomenal.Andhey, it changedour luck.”
Karl Anderson | Getty Images
Luck, you say? Larson had stayed in contention virtually all day, benefiting from timely help in the aerodynamic draft from both his Hendrick Motorsports teammates and his fellow Chevrolet cohorts. He easily gathered the most stage points (16) of any Chase driver, placing fourth behind RFK Racing’s top-three sweep after a rogue Stage 1 strategy and coming home as the runner-up to Joey Logano in Stage 2.
Remarkably, the other 15 drivers in the 16-driver Chase field each had some sort of trouble — most of it bordering on disastrous. More Sundays than not at Talladega, that was Larson’s lot. This time, his No. 5 Chevrolet came out of the 500-mile maelstrom nearly showroom-fresh.
“All the carnage, it happens at ‘Dega. Kyle over the years has usually gotten caught up in that,” said Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon, a six-time Talladega winner in his Hall of Fame driving days. “We’ve had conversation over the year about how he feels about speedway races. We’ve seen the momentum shift a bit, the results get better recently. His confidence of OK, we can put good, solid results together in Talladega. Boom, today was one of those days where it all just went their way. They did their job. Now they come out of here with a win. Not only a win, we see where the points are at unofficially. I’m still in shock as to what took place today, the win and the points.”
The rest of The Chase field could say the same in a negative light, but that shoe fit Larson’s foot last weekend. The No. 5 team’s hopes had dimmed significantly at Phoenix Raceway, where atrocious handling eventually gave way to a downed tire and a late-race wall crunch. While Tyler Reddick cheered a win in Victory Lane and the rest of Larson’s challengers counted their gains, the No. 5 Chevrolet sat on jack stands in the Cup Series garage.
No. 5 crew chief Cliff Daniels took ownership last weekend, dutifully answering every question about what had gone wrong. Seven days later, the team captain was marveling over a whale of a final lap, having given his crew no time to dwell on the previous week’s mishaps.
“Once we kind of got through the disappointment we had on a Monday, we spent more time probably laughing and having fun preparing for Talladega this week than we’ve had in a long time,” Daniels said. “The spirit of the team was up. Everybody was positive. I’ve said this quote a couple times after the race already, but a smooth sea does not make for a skilled sailor. Even when you have those times of difficulty and the sea is rough, that’s when you have a good group of people that are willing to dig in and work together and believe in each other and the process that we built, and the team exercise that we continue to build on every week, there’s a lot of power in that. When you can unite and identify with that, I’m proud of the 5 team doing that this week and showing up prepared for this weekend.”
The prospects for Larson closing out the championship race early in the first year of the revised Chase postseason format are now on the doorstep, at a Martinsville track where Hendrick Motorsports has won a record 31 times.
Larson had joked with the motoring press before Saturday’s preliminaries about the collective rush to crown a championship favorite at various points as the 10-race Chase has unfolded. And though the Hendrick brass talked in terms of “plenty of racing left” and dodging the notion that the title is nearly a shoo-in, only a modest gain would clinch it — luck not required.
“A lot of momentum,” Monn said. “I mean, tomorrow we’ll be right back to work. We’ll talk a little bit about today, go over our post-race stuff, and then we’ll start working towards Martinsville and Homestead. … So we’ve just got to stay consistent. The job’s not done yet, and we’ve just got to keep doing the work. What this 5 team does week in and week out, even when we got knocked down after Phoenix last week, we stayed in it. You know, we had a 49-point lead going to Phoenix, left there with five, and then leave with 73 today. So we’ve just got to keep going, and the 5 team will never quit. That’s the attitude of this whole crew.”
TALLADEGA, Ala. — Kyle Larson’s stunning late-race run to victory in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 left an unsettling quiet among his Chase challengers along pit road.
Most stunned, perhaps, was Denny Hamlin. He opened the afternoon within striking distance of The Chase presented by Mobil 1 lead, escaped from a big wreck to challenge for the win late only to end the day in eighth place and significantly worse in points.
Hamlin’s disappointment mirrored that of virtually everyone in the running for the championship except Chase leader Larson.
In an odd movement of numbers, Hamlin jumped from fourth to second in the playoff standings but lost 42 points to Larson and is 73 behind. Hamlin potentially can make gains next week at Martinsville Speedway, one of his best tracks, but twilight is falling on the season with only two races remaining.
Is Hamlin realistically out of the running for what would be his first championship?
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Hamlin said. After climbing from his car, he took a few minutes to recover from what had been a stress-filled day.
“The 5 (Larson) is on a massive run at the right time of the year,” he said. “If you asked me at the start of the day if I would take an eighth, I mean, probably. So, it’s just what we’ve got. It’s disappointing, but also like our day could have been a (expletive) ton worse.
“We didn’t get stage points. We tried. But it’s just a lot of games going on. It’s really, really hard, tough to do it.”
Hamlin’s car was banged up in the multi-car wreck on Lap 132, but he was strong enough to run in the top five late in the day.
“I got clipped,” he said. “It knocked out some of the front-end toe, and obviously hit the body. It was a handful, but it was at least serviceable. It wasn’t undriveable.”
Hamlin said NASCAR “did the best it could” with length changes to the Talladega stages. “Obviously, it worked in the last two (shorter) stages to where you didn’t have to worry about the fuel mileage. Unfortunately for us, they designed a car that’s just got so much drag in it that it’s not — the racing was just definitely different.”
In the mad mix near the finish, Hamlin was running second to Ricky Stenhouse Jr. but couldn’t hold onto a top five.
“I went with Ricky,” Hamlin said. “I was committed to stay with Ricky because I knew he was going to do what was best for him and not what he was told to do. Then I got clipped on the inside.”
Stenhouse said he had a rearview mirror filled with Hamlin. “I know Denny wanted to move forward,” he said. “I had him behind me and I felt like I was in great position. It just kept breaking up there down the backstretch after I took the lead. The lines were breaking loose. They kept running into each other, but then I was kind of a sitting duck.”
Larson charged to the inside and won the race.
On a day when Chase challenger Joey Logano flew through the air, others slammed hard into the outside wall and big wrecks either eliminated or damaged Chase contenders, the post-race computers churned out numbers that resulted in grim calculations for everybody except Larson.
Following Hamlin in third place in the standings is Christopher Bell, 74 points back. Bell spun trying to enter pit road early in the race, hit the inside wall and damaged his car. He finished 35th. Joining him in the lower regions of the finish order were Ryan Blaney (38th), Tyler Reddick (37th), Logano (34th) and Chase Briscoe (33rd). Blaney, Logano and Briscoe left the race after accidents, and Reddick limped home with significant damage.
In the end, Larson, who had raced 58 times on drafting tracks without success, was the only one of the leading championship contenders to leave Talladega with a strengthened title position.
A late-race multicar wreck resulted in heavy damage to Joey Logano and the No. 22 Team Penske Ford during Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, leading to a red flag that lasted approximately 13 minutes.
On Lap 183 of the eighth race in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, Logano was racing in the high lane, with Ross Chastain ahead and Carson Hocevar behind the No. 22. The trio accordioned together, with the contact sending Logano loose. An ensuing clip with Chase Briscoe’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota sent his Ford airborne and upside down.
Logano exited his vehicle under his own power once his No. 22 Ford was uprighted.
“It looks like I just got a little push in the wrong spot there,” Logano said. “It was very much a ‘Talladega Nights’ moment, like, ‘Oh, no. I’m upside down. This is not a good moment.’ But I can’t thank the safety crew enough. They did an amazing job flipping that thing over. The car did a great job. The last time I flipped, it was crushed on my head. This time, I don’t think anything really caved or crushed at all. I appreciate what NASCAR has done. Thank you and the safety team for getting me out of there. There were some vicious hits in that one. I’m just happy to be alive.”
After initially being quiet on the radio following the wreck, Logano said he was OK following the incident.
“I’m fine,” Logano said. “The radios got disconnected, and I kept trying to. I was thinking about my wife. She was probably wigging out on me, but I tried talking to whoever I could, but when I flipped, everything came off out of the pockets there. It was a hell of a ride. I don’t know if I should be mad that I wrecked or happy to be alive. I think I’m more happy to be alive. Screw the rest of the stuff, but it was a wild ride there. We were in position to do something pretty good there, and it’s just the end-of-the-race scenario. You feel it coming. You know it. I’ve seen the cars that are around me, and I was like, ‘This is not how I dreamed it up,’ but it is what it is.”
In addition to Logano, five Chase drivers were involved in the incident: Austin Cindric, Daniel Suárez, Chris Buescher, Chase Briscoe and Carson Hocevar.
Non-Chase drivers involved in the wreck included: Brad Keselowski, AJ Allmendinger, Josh Berry, Riley Herbst, Erik Jones, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Alex Bowman, Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen. Herbst received heavy damage, with his No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota slamming into the SAFER barrier. All drivers unable to continue exited under their own power.
Logano finished 34th, one of seven Chase drivers to finish 32nd or worse. With Kyle Larson’s Talladega victory, the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet holds a 73-point lead in The Chase standings. Logano sits 100 points behind Larson, fifth in the championship table. Cindric, Suárez, Buescher and Hocevar were four of nine total Chase drivers eliminated from title contention.
The “Big One” occurred during the waning circuits of Stage 2 in the YellaWood 500 on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, bringing huge ramifications across the postseason field.
Battling three-wide in the backstretch on Lap 132, Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford, checked up and transitioned from the middle lane to the high lane, with Chase Elliott behind him. The ensuing lane movement created misalignment, with Blaney making contact with Bubba Wallace and creating a domino effect as a result.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Blaney said regarding Logano’s move before the wrecking sequence. “We were both trying to protect it. Both of us didn’t time it very good and unfortunately wrecked folks. I feel like I had a hand in kind of being aggressive there, but it’s a shame guys got tore up.”
Eight drivers in The Chase presented by Mobil were involved: Blaney, Elliott, Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace, Ty Gibbs, Daniel Suárez and Ryan Preece. Denny Hamlin, also a Chaser, additionally received front-end damage.
Non-Chase drivers involved in the incident included: Ross Chastain, Noah Gragson, John Hunter Nemechek and Gray Gaulding. Twelve total cars were involved in the wreck.
The wreck sends shockwaves across The Chase field, with Hamlin, Blaney and Reddick all entering Sunday’s Talladega race inside the top seven in the championship table. Just two postseason races remain following Talladega, with Martinsville Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 1 and 8, respectively.
“It’s on life support,” Blaney said regarding his title hopes. “That’s for sure, but you never know. It definitely doesn’t help. That’s something we couldn’t afford to have today, and unfortunately it happened, so we’ll just have to go show up next week and try to do the best we can.”
Elliott, Reddick and Blaney finished 36th, 37th and 38th, respectively. With Kyle Larson’s Talladega victory, the wreck, in addition to the Lap 183 multicar incident, the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet holds a 73-point lead over the next closest driver (Hamlin, minus-74). Blaney sits sixth in the standings, 107 points behind Larson. Reddick, meanwhile, is seventh, 126 markers behind.
Elliott, Wallace, Gibbs, Suárez and Preece were among the nine Chase drivers eliminated from title contention.
TALLADEGA, Ala. — Kyle Larson turned in one of the most dramatic victories of his two-time NASCAR Cup Series championship career going from 11th place to Victory Lane on the final lap of overtime to win Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Larson maneuvered his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet low and passed seven cars in just the final quarter-mile of Talladega’s famed 2.66-mile high banks to claim his first ever win in 59 races on a big drafting-style track.
He celebrated the “statement win” with his three children who climbed into the car for the Victory Lap celebration — daughter Audrey, 8, waving to the crowd out of the passenger side window, his youngest son Cooper, 3, sitting inside too and 11-year old son Owen perched from the roof hatch waving the checkered flag to a thrilled crowd who clearly appreciated one of Larson’s most amazing — and overdue — Victory Laps.
The reigning series champion fell from the lead to 11th place with a lap to go and then negotiated his way forward once again, dropping to the bottom lane and roaring to the win by a photo-finish 0.041 seconds over his Hendrick teammate William Byron, Hyak Motorsports Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain who crossed the line door-to-door-to-door directly behind.
Haas Factory Team’s Cole Custer and Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar helped Chevrolet to a top-six sweep on the afternoon.
“I don’t know, I got really lucky with kinda how everything worked out there,” the 34-year old Californian Larson said with a smile, trying to describe the phenomenal winning move.
“I was so edgy in Turns 1 and 2 with the 33 [Richard Childress Racing driver Austin Hill] pushing me, he was helping me.”
Now with only two races remaining, Larson has exponentially expanded his championship lead over his closest challengers: three Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota teammates. He now holds a 73-point advantage on regular season champ Denny Hamlin, is 74 points up on Christopher Bell and 77 points up on Chase Briscoe.
“Really gotta thank all my Chevy GM partners for working with me all day,” Larson continued. “I really felt it and definitely the best speedway race I’ve ever had because of it, so thanks to all them.
“I was pissed at myself off of [Turn] 2, my hands off the wheel, just mad. And then all of a sudden everything just opened up and I was able to keep my momentum up,” he said of the last lap. “Unbelievable way to get my first superspeedway win.”
The ending was an exclamation point for a race that had all the typical Talladega trademarks — a photo finish, close-quarter sparring all afternoon, a 13-minute red flag and a pair of massive multicar accidents that have greatly impacted The Chase presented by Mobil 1 with only a pair of races left to settle the 2026 championship.
“I felt like the energy got broken up off [Turn] 2 and I was like, ‘man, I’ve got a shot here,’ ” two-time Daytona 500 winner Byron said of the last-lap dramatics. “Once I got clear going into [Turn] 3 it was a good job keeping the momentum going. … Man, second sucks but it’s good that Kyle won. We worked really well together all day and if I couldn’t win, I wanted him to win.
“Just proud of the fight.”
It was just that. All day throughout the field.
The 98-lap opening stage of the 189-lap race set the stage for the drama. The three Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford Mustangs seemed to stun the competition — lining up bumper-to-bumper-bumper as they roared off to a lead of more than 30 seconds on the entire fuel-saving field en route to RFK’s Chris Buescher’s easy Stage 1 win. He led a race high 53 laps on the day, but was collected in the late-race accident.
The second massive crash — with only five laps remaining in regulation — brought out the red flag and eliminated many strong cars. As with an earlier multicar accident, it happened toward the front of the field. This one — involving 15 cars — appeared to be triggered by spring Talladega winner Hocevar, who hit the rear bumper of three-time series champion Joey Logano in tight-quarter drafting.
Logano’s No. 22 Team Penske Ford led 23 laps on the day and was battling for the top position when Hocevar’s Chevy made contact. It spun Logano’s car into traffic behind and flipped it upside down, his Ford sliding down the track and coming to rest that way at the exit of the tri-oval. After safety crews flipped the car back on its tires, Logano climbed out on his own.
“Just got a little push in the wrong spot there,” Logano said. “It was a very much a ‘Talladega Nights’ moment like, ‘Oh, no. I’m upside down. This is not good moment.’
“But I can’t thank the safety crew enough. They did an amazing job flipping that thing over. The car did a great job. The last time I flipped, it was crushed on my head. This time, I don’t think anything really caved or crushed at all. I appreciate what NASCAR has done. Thank you and the safety team for getting me out of there.”
Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media
An earlier multicar incident on the backstretch — involving 12 cars — eliminated another Penske championship contender, 2023 series champion Ryan Blaney, among others. The two Penske drivers are mathematically still in the title hunt but they lost significant ground after looking so strong.
Logano is now fifth in the standings, 100 points off Larson’s total and Blaney is sixth, 107 points back. 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, is the only other driver still technically in the title chase, but he trails Larson by 126 points.
Bell, who went into the race ranked second, only five points behind Larson, spun and hit the wall coming to pit road on the opening pit stop of the race – his No. 20 JGR Toyota suffering significant damage and finishing 35th in the 40-car field. Briscoe, whose Toyota Camry started from pole position, was eliminated in the late race accident and finished 33rd.
Hendrick Motorsports executive and NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon said after the race that although things certainly look in the team’s favor toward Larson’s title, “There’s no points lead big enough at this point.”
The NASCAR Cup Series leaves the biggest track on the schedule and returns to action next Sunday at one of the smallest, the half-mile Martinsville Speedway for the Xfinity 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Byron is the defending race winner. His Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott won there this spring.
Stage 2 recap
Joey Logano beat Kyle Larson for the Stage 2 victory in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega by just 0.012 seconds in the YellaWood 500.
Larson was followed by Chase Briscoe, Austin Cindric, William Byron and Chris Buescher as the top six spots were swept by drivers competing in The Chase. Connor Zilisch, Shane van Gisbergen, Erik Jones and Austin Hill completed the top 10.
The first multicar accident of the afternoon occurred at Lap 132 of Sunday’s race, wiping out numerous contenders.
Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney were leading the outside lane when the two became disjointed, shucking Blaney right toward the outside SAFER barrier. His No. 12 Ford lost momentum just in front of Bubba Wallace, who was getting shoved in the outside lane and could not slow to avoid Blaney, triggering a 12-car pileup down the backstretch during the second stage of the YellaWood 500.
Among those 12 were eight competitors in the championship hunt in The Chase: Blaney, Wallace, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Ty Gibbs, Ryan Preece, Chase Elliott and Daniel Suárez.
Blaney was unable to continue, taking a significant hit to his championship hopes; Blaney entered Sunday’s race fifth in the standings, 40 points behind series leader Kyle Larson. Reddick, last week’s winner at Phoenix Raceway, entered seventh in points, 56 points out from the lead. Blaney, Reddick and Elliott were among those whose vehicles were taken to the garage. Also collected in the crash were Ross Chastain, Noah Gragson, John Hunter Nemechek and Gray Gaulding.
Larson was scored as the race leader at the time of caution.
Stage 1 recap
RFK Racing took the opening stage of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway into its own hands as Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece and Brad Keselowski swept the top three spots in Stage 1 of the YellaWood 500.
Points leader Kyle Larson placed fourth in the stage ahead of William Byron, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Austin Cindric in the first stage of the eighth race of The Chase.
Heavy fuel saving early slowed the field’s pace to 58-second lap times, down 11 seconds from the fastest lap of the stage set by Chase Elliott on Lap 73 of 47.546 seconds. The RFK Racing trio of Preece, Keselowski and Buescher decided it was time to catch the field sleeping and stood on the throttle, creating a three-car draft of their own to open up a 22-second lead over the rest of the field by Lap 38, running lap times three seconds per lap faster than the rest of the field. Once pit stops cycled through, the trio led by as many as 40 seconds over the fourth-place car.
Christopher Bell’s day quickly turned disastrous when attempting to pit on Lap 56. Bell was leading a pack of Toyotas to pit road when his No. 20 Toyota broke out of control and spun toward the inside wall. Bell slammed the wall with his right-front and right-rear corners and incurred significant damage. Bell’s team changed four tires on the initial stop, but Bell cut a right-front tire due to a fender rub after returning to action. Pitting to repair some damage and get two new right-side tires, the team was then issued a pass-through penalty for too many crewmen over the wall. Insult was added to injury when the car punctured another right-front tire, trapping Bell in 40th place, nine laps down by the end of the stage.
Front Row Motorsports’ Zane Smith also suffered a flat right-rear tire on Lap 72, but the field avoided the No. 38 Ford, which made it back to pit road.
NOTE: Post-race technical inspection concluded without issue, confirming Larson as the race winner.
Trouble for NASCAR Cup Series Chase driver Christopher Bell came not while racing on the track at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, but while entering pit road.
During a Lap 56 green-flag pit stop in the YellaWood 500, Bell, driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, lost control, making contact with the inside wall and suffering significant right-front damage.
Bell limped his No. 20 Toyota to pit road for service, and after initially re-entering the race, had to return to the pits after a tire went down, resulting in Bell going multiple laps behind the race leaders. A penalty for too many crew members over the wall immediately followed the tire stop.
A second right-front tire went down on Lap 67, forcing another pit-road visit for Bell.
The sequence of events brings major implications for The Chase presented by Mobil 1. Bell entered Talladega second in the championship table, just five markers behind Chase leader Kyle Larson after a 46-point gain over him at Phoenix Raceway the prior weekend. Bell finished Talladega in 35th, 12 laps down.
Just two Chase races remain following Talladega: Martinsville Speedway on Nov. 1 and Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 8. With Larson’s Talladega victory, Bell sits third in The Chase standings, 74 points behind the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports driver and one point behind Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin.
TALLADEGA, Ala. — For much of Saturday afternoon, Carson Kvapil led a parade of race cars around Talladega Superspeedway as if he had been named The Progress Group 250 grand marshal.
The rest of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series contenders were satisfied to ride in a long single line behind Kvapil, whose assignment evidently included breaking through the air for everyone on the track. No one presented a challenge to the No. 1 JR Motorsports Chevrolet.
Then, on the last lap, as on so many last laps at Talladega, chaos took over.
The straight line of cars broke into branches. Sam Mayer began the march, dropping low in Turn 1 in an attempt to pass Kvapil. That move fizzled, and Mayer eventually finished 13th, a lesson in last-lap strategy — or the lack of it — at Talladega.
From there, the run to the finish was a mixture of surges and blocks. On the backstretch, Sammy Smith got a push from Justin Allgaier and moved side by side with Kvapil into the homestretch. At the line, Smith edged Kvapil, who had led 67 of 94 laps, by 0.084 seconds for the win.
Kvapil was left in second place, losing an excellent chance to make a major gain in the race for the series championship. Kvapil remained fifth in the standings, picking up 20 points on leader Jesse Love, but Kvapil still trails by 59 markers with only two races remaining in The Chase presented by Mobil 1.
Disappointment was written across Kvapil’s face in the immediate aftermath of the race.
“I think I might have left the bottom open, but I don’t know if it really would have made any difference,” Kvapil said. “I felt like there were more (JR Motorsports) teammates and more momentum up top and that the bottom would really get pinned down. I chose to go to the top there, and I guess it was the wrong move.
“I feel like we (JRM drivers) were super-organized all day and stayed with each other and raced it out right to the end. So, I’m just disappointed for this team.”
Kvapil, in the front all day, had a good look at the drivers who might challenge him at the end.
“I knew the run was going to come,” Kvapil said. “I saw the 41 (Mayer) peek down there into [Turn 1], and I blocked it, and it pushed me out. Then the guys behind me got side by side. Then I was just kind of out there on my own. I had to make a decision in Turn 3 on what lane I was going to stick with to the end. Hindsight’s 20-20, but I picked the wrong one.”
JR Motorsports’ Allgaier was involved in the chess-like finish as he and his teammates battled for positioning and drafting help.
“I think we all had a different kind of vision of what the last few laps were going to look like,” Allgaier said. “They definitely were different than all of us had drawn up on the playbook. I think we did a really good job today of managing the day as a whole as a company.”
Kvapil, who led 31 straight laps before the final one, wound up being a target of too many challengers after leading for so long.
“I would have told you seven days a week and twice on Sundays that you would want to be leading coming to the white flag,” Allgaier said. “Obviously, that’s not how it worked out. I thought Sammy and I were probably sitting ducks and that Carson was probably going to be in the catbird’s seat.”
Instead, that seat belonged to Smith, who led only the final lap.
