With a win already under his belt this season, Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch knew he could gamble at Talladega on Sunday.
Busch took the lead in the second NASCAR overtime shootout and earned the victory in Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Ala.
Following incidents with six laps to go and in the first extra segment, Bubba Wallace passed Busch as the white flag flew, but Wallace spun while blocking Ryan Blaney for second.
That caused the eighth caution, and Busch cruised around in his No. 8 Chevrolet at pace-lap speed to win under caution in the 196-lap event and record the 62nd Cup Series win of his career.
“Sometimes you’ve got to be lucky,” Busch said. “Some of these races come down to that and you’ve got to take them when they come your way.”
In his second victory this season, the RCR driver won for the second time at Talladega. His previous win was on April 27, 2008, while driving for Joe Gibbs Racing — 55 wins ago.
It was RCR’s 13th team win at the 2.66-mile superspeedway.
Having enough fuel was an issue for Busch, but his Feb. 26 win at Auto Club Speedway in California made the decision easy.
“We were sweating it being close, but I thought back to Fontana earlier this year where we had a win,” Busch said. “I’m like, ‘We’ve got to gamble. We’re up here, you’ve got to take the track position when you have it and go give it what you can on the restart.'”
Blaney finished second followed by Chris Buescher, Chase Briscoe and Brad Keselowski.
In his 800th career start, 2014 Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick finished 20th.
Arriving at Talladega without a pole position there in 18 career seasons, Denny Hamlin produced a top-qualifying lap for the first time and led the drivers to the green flag to open the 188-lap race around the high-banked track.
However, Briscoe and Wallace swapped the lead at NASCAR’s largest oval track during Stage 1, with Wallace topping the leaderboard with 23 circuits led.
The event’s first caution flew with 18 laps left in the first segment when Briscoe spun on pit road while leading a group of Fords and was unable to get his No. 14 Mustang moving despite being under power.
In his second race since returning from a broken tibia, Chase Elliott roared across the finish line at Lap 60 followed by teammate Alex Bowman for his first 2023 stage win.
But Aric Almirola earned a win in the second stage when teammate Harvick pushed the No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford to the line to end Elliott’s bid for a second straight segment triumph.
–Field Level Media