Monday, Oct. 3 6 a.m., NASCAR Camping World Truck Series: Chevy Silverado 250 at Talladega (re-air), FS2 6 p.m., NASCAR Race Hub, FS1
6 p.m., NASCAR America Motormouths, Peacock
7 p.m., NASCAR Camping World Truck Series: Chevy Silverado 250 at Talladega (re-air), FS1
11:01 p.m., Race for the Championship: Hometown Glory (re-air), USA Network
Tuesday, Oct. 4 1 a.m., NASCAR Camping World Truck Series: Chevy Silverado 250 at Talladega (re-air), FS2
12:30 p.m., NASCAR Camping World Truck Series: Chevy Silverado 250 at Talladega (re-air), FS2
6 p.m., NASCAR Race Hub, FS1
Wednesday, Oct. 5 1 p.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS2 6 p.m., NASCAR Race Hub, FS1
6 p.m., NASCAR America Motormouths, Peacock
7 p.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS1
Thursday, Oct. 6 2 a.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS1
5 a.m., NASCAR Race Hub Best of Radioactive: Charlotte (re-air), FS1
6 a.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS2
9 a.m., NASCAR Race Hub Best of Radioactive: Charlotte (re-air), FS2
6 p.m., NASCAR Race Hub, FS1
6 p.m., Dale Jr. Download, Peacock
10 p.m., Race for the Championship: All or Nothing, USA Network
Friday, Oct. 7 12 a.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS2 1:01 a.m., Race for the Championship: All or Nothing (re-air), USA Network 6 p.m., NASCAR Race Hub, FS1
9 p.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS2
Saturday, Oct. 8 6 a.m., NASCAR Auto Racing Classics: 2011 Coca-Cola 600 (re-air), FS2
9 a.m., NASCAR Race Hub Best of Radioactive: Charlotte (re-air), FS2
9:30 a.m., Unrivaled: Earnhardt vs. Gordon (re-air), FS2
10 a.m., NASCAR Xfinity Series practice at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, NBC Sports App
10:30 a.m., NASCAR Xfinity Series qualifying at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, NBC Sports App
Noon, NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, NBC Sports App
12:30 p.m., NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course (in-progress), USA Network
3 p.m., Countdown to Green: Charlotte, NBC
3:30 p.m., NASCAR Xfinity Series: Drive for the Cure 250 at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, NBC (simulcast on Peacock)
On PRN: 2:30 p.m., NASCAR Xfinity Series: Drive for the Cure 250 at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course
Sunday, Oct. 9 10:30 a.m., NASCAR Race Hub Best of Radioactive: Charlotte (re-air), FS1
11:30 a.m., NASCAR RaceDay: Charlotte, FS1
1 p.m., Countdown to Green: Charlotte, NBC
2 p.m., NASCAR Cup Series: Bank of America ROVAL 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, NBC
On PRN: 1 p.m., NASCAR Cup Series: Bank of America ROVAL 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway road course
The last superspeedway race of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season is here.
Sunday’s YellaWood 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC) at Talladega Superspeedway has plenty of playoff implications — no playoff driver is safe.
Expect playoff drivers to go for stage points while at the same time not being overly risky.
This style of racing may keep things a bit more tame through the first two stages, meaning true performance is more likely to come through. As a result, I’m going with the best performer in 2022 among the six Toyotas for today’s best bet.
That top-performing Toyota driver at superspeedways is Martin Truex Jr.
In the three combined races at Talladega and Daytona, Truex has the highest driver rating among not only the Toyotas, but the whole field. Luckily for him, it has also translated into solid finishes.
He picked up a 13th-place finish at the Daytona 500, followed by fifth- and eighth-place results at the other two superspeedway races.
Those finishes translate to a third, second and first among the Toyota clan.
It’s safe to say only rookie Ty Gibbs should be in a tier below the rest of the Toyotas. However, Truex is +600 at BetMGM to take home top honors.
With his performance at superspeedways in the Next Gen car, he shouldn’t be the driver with the second-longest odds among the Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI stable. My model says Truex finishes as the top Toyota at an 18.2% rate, which translates to +450 as fair odds.
If you can’t get him at +600 at BetMGM, +550 at Caesars Sportsbook or +500 at DraftKings will suffice.
The Bet: Martin Truex Jr., Top Toyota +600 | Bet to: +500
TALLADEGA, Ala. – Sam Mayer can hang his hat on what was a career-best finish Saturday in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, but narrowly missed out on a victorious day by about the length of a ballcap’s brim.
The range of emotions hit Mayer in the form of a may-as-well-laugh gut punch after Saturday’s Sparks 300 at Talladega Superspeedway, where he came up a scant .015 seconds short of his first Xfinity win. Instead, he was unable to stave off the final-lap charge of AJ Allmendinger, who drove his No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet past the No. 1 JR Motorsports Camaro of Mayer in the tri-oval with the checkered flag in sight.
“Nothing probably to laugh about, but I just can’t help but laugh. It’s weird,” Mayer said. “But I will say finishing second place like this puts a weird feeling in your stomach. I had a lot of confidence going into today that the car was gonna be fast. Our Accelerate Camaro is always fast when they come to the superspeedways, and today was no different. Obviously we were leading with the white flag. So, proud of my guys, they kicked ass today, did everything right, pit-strategy wise and everything else. But we were obviously three feet short. You can’t do anything about that, really.”
Mayer had taken control late, after race-long dominator Austin Hill was shuffled back in the running order. With Hill fading from contention, the 19-year-old driver traded the lead with Allmendinger three times in the last five laps, but held the advantage at the drop of the white flag.
Mayer kept his challengers in check on the backstretch and actually stretched out his lead through Turns 3 and 4. But that left almost too much of a gap for Allmendinger, Ryan Sieg and others to mount a final surge.
“It was my first time experiencing something like that, so I didn’t know what to expect or how to protect it or predict it,” Mayer said. “I did a decent job of it, I think the move on the backstretch to kind of keep the lead there was good, but I just needed to do it one more time on the front.”
Mayer’s feat has an even more remarkable context. No. 1 crew chief Taylor Moyer said that the team made an 11th-hour substitution at spotter after Brandon McReynolds left to be with family after a Camping World Truck Series crash that sent his brother-in-law, Jordan Anderson, to a local hospital for evaluation. The No. 1 team swapped in Wood Brothers Racing spotter Tyler Green, who has some experience with Mayer but not with the JRM operation.
“Sam did a great job. Tyler did an absolutely fabulous job,” Moyer told NASCAR.com. “I think he did everything right. I don’t know what he could have done better in the tri-oval, because honestly, I put my head down and prayed. But off of (turn) three, probably got a little far out, but sometimes you got a win one like that to come back and dominate.”
The result gave Mayer a 12-point cushion over the cutoff line in the Xfinity Series Playoffs, with the Round of 12’s elimination race coming next Saturday (3 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, PRN, SiriusXM) at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. Only Allmendinger and Noah Gragson – winner of the playoff opener at Bristol – are locked into the next round.
Moyer noted that the points gain was a positive, but also pointed out the teenager’s season-long progress, which is now marked by 10 top-five finishes. Saturday marked the latest step in his evolution, another learning experience to file away.
“The biggest thing we’ve worked on this year, it’s just race craft,” Moyer said. “I mean, Sam came with speed, but I’ve heard some pretty smart people say these races are 70% race craft. You see a lot of fast kids that never figure it out, and they just fizzle out. So that’s what we’re working on with Sam is the intelligence. That was our biggest thing we worked on coming into this race was when he gets those runs and make those moves, always having an end goal of how that move shakes out, so always know where you’re going.
“You know, early on in his career on a speedway, he’d get a big run and pull to the bottom lane and there’d be no hole to get into. We passed three to lose six. So yeah, I’m really proud of him for working on that. He put in action today everything we worked on coming into this race. That close.”
TALLADEGA, Ala. — Ty Gibbs repeated his apology for a pit-road incident in last weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, saying he will learn a lesson after absorbing a midweek behavioral penalty that left him $75,000 lighter.
Gibbs rallied from a Stage 1 spin and wall brush to finish seventh in Saturday’s Xfinity Series event at Talladega Superspeedway, stoking his bid to advance in that tour’s playoff grid. But his part-time duty on the Cup Series side, subbing for Kurt Busch with 23XI Racing, is what drew the attention of NASCAR officials.
Gibbs broadsided the No. 42 Chevrolet of Ty Dillon on pit road during last Sunday’s race, taking out his aggression in close proximity to RFK Racing crew members and NASCAR officials in a nearby pit stall. This week, Gibbs said his driving tactic was the subject of conversations at his Joe Gibbs Racing shop.
“They did all the talking. You know, I have a great family and I have great team owners, and I definitely had a lot of chats,” said Gibbs, who apologized on social media after the penalty. “But just making sure that, I can sit here and apologize to everybody, and my words don’t mean anything because I think I have to do it through my actions. I mean, I’m sorry for my mistakes, I announced that, but it’s by my actions that I’m gonna really truly say I’m sorry, because I can’t be doing that stuff again and I’ve got to keep going. But definitely had a lot of talks.”
It’s not the first time this season that Gibbs has been fined for unsafe driving. This spring at Martinsville Speedway, the 19-year-old driver was docked for bumping the No. 1 Chevy of rival Sam Mayer on pit road after the checkered flag.
Gibbs said that replays of his run-in with Dillon have been difficult — but necessary — to watch.
“It’s just hard to go back and look at that stuff,” Gibbs said. “I’ll definitely remember it and I’ll watch it multiple times and I’ll learn from it. But you know, it definitely is sad to see myself doing that.”
TALLADEGA, Ala. – Three times A.J. Allmendinger has led the white flag lap on a superspeedway track and not been able to lead that next lap to earn the big trophy.
On Saturday, the veteran waited and pulled ahead of the field in the final feet coming to the Sparks 300 checkered flag at Talladega Superspeedway and edged 19-year old Sam Mayer by .015 seconds – about three feet — in a photo finish to earn his first NASCAR Xfinity Series win at NASCAR’s biggest track.
It marked the regular season champ’s fourth victory in the No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet this season and first ever at a superspeedway venue. Most importantly, the win — coming in the second race of the opening round of the playoffs — is an automatic ticket through to the next round of Xfinity Series playoff competition.
“Let’s go,” an absolutely elated Allmendinger screamed into the grandstands after climbing out of his car and accepting the checkered flag at the iconic track.
“Gosh, we’ve been so close to winning one (superspeedway race) and I feel like I keep giving them away,” Allmendinger said. “Thought I might have given it away. I’m still learning, trying to know what too big of a lead is. But honestly, all credit to (Kaulig teammate) Landon Cassill.
“He kept shoving me. He stuck with me. That’s what is great about Kaulig Racing. When you have teammates like Landon and Daniel (Hemric) that you know wherever you go, they’ll go with you. So thank you Landon.
“Man, I just wanted to win a superspeedway and finally got it,” added a grinning Allmendinger, who now claims 14 career Xfinity Series victories.
Cassill finished third, followed by Ryan Sieg and JR Motorsports driver Josh Berry – all playoff contenders. Parker Kligerman was sixth, followed by Playoff drivers Ty Gibbs, Daniel Hemric, Brandon Jones and Noah Gragson.
It marked quite the comeback for Gibbs, who qualified on the front row, but was involved in the only on-track yellow flag for incident on the afternoon. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s No. 54 Toyota was tagged from behind by Justin Allgaier while racing in a tight pack up front only three laps into the 113-lap event. Gibbs spun out but was remarkably untouched by any other car.
A quick pit stop and impressive pit strategy later, Gibbs was running around the top 10 in the closing laps of the race and managed to recover to that seventh place final effort.
Gragson, driver of the No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, was looking to become the first driver in NASCAR Xfinity Series history to win five consecutive races and was running among the top three with 10 laps to go.
His ultimate move forward for the win in the closing laps was blocked and he instead finished 10th. Although just short of that historic victory nod, he had already earned his automatic ticket to the playoffs’ second round by virtue of his victory last week at Texas (his seventh on the season and fourth in a row).
“We’re going to keep it going,” Gragson said after the race. “I have a super motivated team… you want to win them all, but you can’t do that sometimes.”
Pole-sitter and series rookie Austin Hill, who swept the two stage wins and led the most laps – 60 on Saturday – also dropped out of the lead group in the waning laps to the checkered flag. He finished 14th.
With Allmendinger and Gragson having earned automatic bids in ton the next round of the playoffs, Gibbs (-21) and Hill (-27) are ranked third and fourth in the standings, followed by Berry, Allgaier — who finished 15th Saturday – Mayer and Sieg in that eighth and final transfer position.
Defending series champion Hemric (-6 to the elimination line), Brandon Jones (-10), Riley Herbst (-10) and Jeremy Clements (-47) are ranked ninth through 12th heading into the final race of this playoff round.
Up next is the Drive for the Cure 250 presented by BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina on Saturday (3 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Allmendinger has won the last three races there.
NOTE: Post-race inspection concluded without issue, confirming Allmendinger as the race winner.
Talladega is the wild card of all wild cards and a surprise winner always looms when NASCAR heads to the 2.66-mile superspeedway. The first four playoff races have been won by non-playoff drivers (Tyler Reddick was eliminated after Bristol when he won last week at Texas), so the trends certainly favor someone outside the Round of 12 striking paydirt Sunday afternoon. In the last eight fall races at Talladega, just three current playoff drivers have taken the checkered flag with Joey Logano taking two of them (2015, 2016). If a 20th winner this season is to emerge, it would set the modern single-season record for the series. Drivers still looking for their first win of 2022 include Ryan Blaney, Martin Truex Jr, and superspeedway aficionados Michael McDowell, Aric Almirola, Brad Keselowski and Justin Haley. Anything can happen at Talladega, and massive playoff implications are sure to emerge throughout the 500-mile event. | How 19 winners stacks up in history | Surprise Talladega winners
Who’s hot? Who’s not?
Speaking of Logano, he’s heading to Talladega with the most momentum of the current 12-driver playoff field after scoring a runner-up finish last Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway. The Team Penske driver is at the top of the board in the playoff standings and is currently 37 points clear of the Round of 8 elimination line. While collecting stage points is vital for playoff drivers, Logano will have the most leeway in strategy Sunday and has enough separation above the bubble to ride more cautiously around the high-banked superspeedway. Logano is also a three-time ‘Dega winner but his aggressiveness has led to a mixed bag of results with five finishes of 11th or worse in the last six races there.
It may be a bit of a surprise but Regular-Season Champion Chase Elliott hasn’t had the best of starts to his playoff run. He’s finished outside the top 30 in two of the first four races and enters Talladega just 11 points above the cutline. The 2020 champion will be in a bit of a bind Sunday as Elliott will have to balance risk vs. reward in order to stay above the elimination line before the Round of 12 elimination race at Charlotte (Oct. 9). The silver lining for Elliott is that he does have favorable results at Talladega with the second-best average finish of active Cup drivers with more than 10 starts at the 2.66-mile superspeedway (15.2).
Driving under the radar
Ross Chastain has quietly worked his way to second in the Cup Series playoff standings, 25 points above the elimination line. Outside of a mechanical setback at Darlington, Chastain’s postseason run has been relatively clean with a pair of top 10s at Kansas and Bristol, followed by a 13th-place run at Texas. The two-time winner in 2022 should have the a shot entering Sunday’s race as Chastain is the defending winner at Talladega, leading the one lap he needed in April en route to his second Cup Series victory.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
Race-day staples ✅
Our biggest pieces of the week — get covered for race day from all angles.
• Playoffs standings: Where drivers stand before Talladega | Latest standings
• Paint Scheme Preview: Great new looks for Talladega | See your favorite • Power Rankings: Did Joey Logano take control of the playoff race? | Updated driver rankings • NASCAR betting: Multiple co-favorites heading into Talladega | Underdogs, value bets • Fantasy Fastlane: As playoff race tightens, who are the best plays? | Must starts, sleepers
Catch the pack 💨
Read up on the top headlines from the week leading up to Sunday’s race.
• Bowman out: Alex Bowman to miss Talladega race because of concussion-like symptoms | Read more
• Busch improving: Kurt Busch gives update on condition at charity event | Catch up
• Byron, Gibbs penalized: NASCAR docks them for getting physical under caution/on pit road |Read more
• Reaction to penalties: Stacking Pennies crew weighs in on Byron, Gibbs penalties |Watch the segment
• Bunched up playoff race: Talladega offers opportunities to jump ahead | Read more
• Race for the Championship: Episode 5 features Kyle Busch and Trackhouse Racing | Read more
• Heading in the right direction: Cody Ware gives update after wreck at Texas | Catch up
• Jimmie’s bucket list: Seven-time champ Johnson steps back from full-time racing |Read more
• Pulling back the appeal: No. 12 Team Penske squad to start serving suspensions | Get the details
Get in on the action 💰
Think you know NASCAR? Put your mettle to the test with gaming, fantasy.
• BetMGM: Belief in non-playoff drivers continues to grow | Read full analysis
• The Action Network: Why your eyes should be on Erik Jones | 30-1 pick to make • Backseat Bets: Who wins head-to-head matchups at Talladega? | Watch the segment
• Play it LIVE: Full guide to 2022 NASCAR Fantasy Live game | New rules for playoffs
• Going all the way: 2022 Cup Series championship odds | See them here
Traveling back to Talladega 🇺🇸
Talladega may be the most unpredictable race in the entire playoffs — so, see what has happened here in the past.
• Surprise winners: These drivers shocked the world at Talladega | See them all
• Last year: Bubba Wallace pulls off a historic win at Talladega | Full race recap • This spring: Ross Chastain pulls off a last-lap pass for the upset win | Relive the moment • Fall victories: Drivers who came to Alabama in autumn and conquered | List of winners
Fast facts ⏩
Hard-hitting, race-relevant statistics, brought to you by the experts at Racing Insights.
• Non-playoff drivers have won the last four races, the longest stretch in series history. • Kyle Busch is the only driver to finish top 10 in all three superspeedway races in 2022. • The driver winning the Talladega playoff race has never gone on to win the championship (12 of the 18 were won by playoff drivers). • The driver leading at the white flag has finished fifth or worse in each of the last four Talladega races to go the full distance. • Rodney Childers is making his 600th career start as a crew chief this weekend; he will be the 15th crew chief with at least 600 starts. Kevin Harvick and Childers are the longest active driver/crew chief pairing making their 314th start together this weekend.
Say what? 🎙
Notable quotes from the stars of the sport heading into Sunday’s race.
• “No, I don’t feel confident just because I won the race there earlier this year (laughs). That was pure luck, it’s still hard for me to believe it happened.” — Ross Chastain, driver of the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet
• “Unfortunately we are going into Talladega buried under the (elimination) line, but we’re going to give it our all. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.” — Christopher Bell, driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
• “When you first start in this sport and you’re trying to work your way up, you just never know where you’re going to end up and how it’s going to go and what opportunities you might get. To look back on it and say that you’ve crew chiefed 600 races in the Cup Series is kind of crazy. Everybody goes through ups and downs and you wonder how it’s all going to go, and I think everybody knows that my career definitely changed when Kevin wanted me to do this, and to be able to do it for a long time and win a lot of races and all that has been pretty special.” — Rodney Childers, crew chief of the No. 4 Ford driven by Kevin Harvick
NASCAR Studios’ George Winkler contributed to this report.
See where your favorite driver will pit for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series YellaWood 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Talladega Superspeedway.
TALLADEGA, Ala. — William Byron says his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team has prepared its case for an appeal of midweek penalties but that he hasn’t changed his approach for Sunday’s race in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Byron and his team were penalized for spinning out Denny Hamlin during a caution period in last weekend’s event at Texas Motor Speedway. NASCAR officials later said they did not see the incident as it happened and issued no in-race penalty. The driver and team were docked 25 points in their respective standings in Tuesday’s penalty report, and Byron was also fined $50,000 for the late-race contact.
As he did post-race at Texas, Byron reiterated Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway that he did not intend to send Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota spinning off the track, but that he did want to deliver a message to convey his displeasure. Byron said he and the team took exception to the severity of the penalty, which will be appealed in a hearing next week.
“We’ve kind of compiled our list of evidence and got quite a few videos and things to look at and information that we’ve put together,” Byron said after qualifying ninth for Sunday’s YellaWood 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM). “So, I feel pretty good about that and willing to help any way I can. I feel like I’ve tried to help in some ways, just to try to get all the evidence kind of put together. But yeah, I feel good about that end of things. … Like I said, we’re just focused on, I mean, this weekend we just have to go get stage points, try to go win the race, and there’s worse places to do it.”
Jeff Andrews, Hendrick Motorsports’ president and general manager, said that the team opted to appeal in the hopes of presenting an opposing viewpoint of the incident and the intent.
“Until we get through the process next week, I think it’s probably best just to leave it at, our perspective of it is a little bit different and we would just like the opportunity to explain that and bring some things forward,” Andrews said.
The penalty dropped Byron from third to 10th in the Cup Series playoff standings, moving him from a 17-point cushion above the provisional elimination line to an eight-point deficit with two races remaining in the postseason’s Round of 12. Though the appeal is still pending, Byron said his approach to Sunday’s 500-miler relative to his playoff positioning won’t change.
“I race eight (points) behind. I don’t think about the hypotheticals,” Byron said. “Obviously, I feel like we’ve got a good case and a good idea of what … a good amount of evidence that we put together, but I race like it’s there and like it happened. So just move forward with it, I think go after the stage points and feel like we’re capable of running really well at superspeedways. I’ve had a couple of wins on superspeedway-type tracks, so feel good about that.”
Byron said he had a chat this week with Hamlin, who mentioned after Texas that he’d keep their run-in in his memory bank.
“We had a good conversation a couple of days ago, and we’ve never had issues,” Byron said. “So I’m not really worried about … I’m not thinking about Denny and his team. You know, I’m thinking about our team and what we can do going forward. So yeah, it was a good conversation, learned a lot from him, got a better understanding of kind of what he was thinking.”
Hamlin was not restored to his running position after the Byron bump, and he placed 10th in the Round of 12 opener in Fort Worth. Asked if he was satisfied that competition officials penalized Byron and his team, the JGR veteran offered: “Yeah, sorta.”
“I mean, it didn’t help my finish,” Hamlin added. “I saw a lot of people react, ‘well, he could have made up those spots.’ Well, it didn’t change the fact that I could have won the race and instead finished 10th. So you gotta account for those points in there, as well.”
TALLADEGA, Ala. – It took a lot of last lap gumption on the Talladega Superspeedway high banks and an official “race finish review” afterward, but longtime competitor Matt DiBenedetto earned his first NASCAR national series race victory in Saturday’s Chevy Silverado 250 Camping World Truck Series race.
Because the race ended under caution, NASCAR officials reviewed video to determine who was leading when an accident froze the field coming to the checkered flag. Ultimately, it marked the first and only lap the former NASCAR Cup Series driver DiBenedetto had ever led in the truck series – and it delivered his first trophy.
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship competitor Ben Rhodes was scored runner-up with young rookie – and Alabama native – Bret Holmes in third place.
It marked the fifth consecutive Talladega truck race that the winner led only the last lap.
“Oh man, it’s been such a long time coming,” said DiBenedetto, who recently renewed his contract with the No. 25 Rackley WAR Chevrolet team. “I’m so thankful.
“It just seems so surreal,” DiBenedetto added before offering good wishes to fellow driver Jordan Anderson, who was transported to the hospital after an accident on Lap 19.
“I think my heart rate was higher waiting for that than [taking] the white flag.”
It was a typically competitive afternoon at Talladega – with 11 leaders and 25 lead changes in the 95-lap race – only to end with a dramatic push for the checkered flag in an overtime finish.
The 25-year old Holmes – the 2020 ARCA Menards Series champion – led the white flag lap and thought he was ahead when the final yellow and checkered flags waved and pulled up to the trophy stand, where DiBenedetto later pulled alongside.
“It definitely showed we deserve to be here,” Holmes said. “Tough to lose that one for sure.”
Ryan Preece and playoff driver Christian Eckes rounded out the top five. Hailie Deegan – the only full-time woman competitor in the series – earned a career best sixth-place finish. Chase Purdy, Colby Howard, Parker Kligerman and Tyler Ankrum rounded out the top 10.
Anderson, who emerged from a fiery single-truck crash on Lap 19, was transported to a local hospital where he was reported awake and alert.
As for the playoffs, only two driver championship contenders – Rhodes and Eckes – finished among the top 10. With Ty Majeski’s win at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sept. 15, he is the only driver to have already secured a position in the Championship 4.
Chandler Smith was 14th, Zane Smith, 17th and Stewart Friesen was 20th. Majeski finished 23rd and polesitter John Hunter Nemechek – who won Stage 1 – was 24th.
The playoff standings continue to be very tight beyond Majeski. Chandler Smith holds a 12-point edge on Zane Smith with reigning series champion Ben Rhodes in that important fourth position, 27 points behind Chandler Smith.
Eckes and Friesen are both three points behind Rhodes. Nemechek is five points from the cutoff line and Grant Enfinger, who was involved in an accident on Lap 80 is now 26 points behind Rhodes.
While not being championship eligible this season, DiBenedetto will leave Talladega with a full heart and lots of hope for next year thanks to securing this memorable first victory.
“We’ve come so close so many times at this track, I’ve felt like Talladega – more than Bristol or any of those places – owes me one so pretty sweet,” DiBenedetto said adding, “The wait was well worth it.”
The final playoff race to decide which four drivers advance to the series championship will be Oct. 22 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (1 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The trucks last raced at the South Florida track in June 2020 where Kyle Busch earned his third series win at the track.
NOTE: Post-race technical inspection was completed with no issues, confirming DiBenedetto as the race winner.
TALLADEGA, Ala. — Jordan Anderson gave another update on Monday on his condition after he sustained second-degree burns in a fiery crash during Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Thank you everyone for the texts, calls, and prayers. Haven’t been able to be on my phone, but I am so humbled by the overwhelming support.
Had to go to the ER last night for some side effects, so heading to the Wake Forest burn center tomorrow.
On Saturday night he was taken by helicopter to a local hospital for further evaluation. The 31-year-old driver said he suffered burns across his neck, face, arm, hands and knees.
Anderson’s No. 3 Chevrolet erupted in flames and smoke as he entered Turn 1 during the 19th of 94 laps in the Chevy Silverado 250. His truck slid toward the paved apron and came to a halt against the inside retaining wall.
Anderson quickly exited the truck to the attention of the safety crew and was taken by ambulance to the infield care center. A NASCAR spokesperson confirmed that Anderson was transported from there to a local hospital.
Anderson was making his fifth start of the year in the Camping World Truck Series. He is also a team owner on the Xfinity Series side, fielding a full-season effort for driver Myatt Snider.
