The Yellawood 500 on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway featured the largest crash in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series, featured a 0.006 second margin of victory for an underdog team, and changed the course of several championship pursuits.
In other words, Talladega performed to its intended role as the true wild card race of the chase for the championship.
By the end, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the JTG Daugherty No. 47 won the race in just the eighth closest finish in Cup history over Brad Keselowski in his RFK Racing No. 6 with a push from William Byron. Remarkably, the eighth finish in history is only good for third closest finish of this year, with Kansas I and Atlanta I producing the first and third closest.
It’s been the season of photo finishes.
Byron actually bailed on Stenhouse, hoping to beat them both to the line, but Kyle Larson appeared to lay off Keselowski enough to stall out everyone’s momentum and allow Stenhouse to hold on.
“When the 24 jumped out to the outside, it was like a parachute hit my car,” Stenhouse said. “I was just hoping that we would get to the start-finish line before them. It was a drag race at that point. When I got probably to the back stretch, they were pretty confident that we had won, and a big sigh of relief for sure.”
Stenhouse had a variety of emotions when he realized a fellow Chevrolet driven by Larson was going to line up behind Keselowski.
“So, I was pumped to see Kyle line up behind the 6, but he pushed him a lot harder than I was hoping he would push him,” Stenhouse said. “So, yeah, it was three-wide there at the end coming across the line. We’ve lost a couple here by inches, so it was cool to win one.”
Keselowski didn’t fault Larson and even credited him for giving him a chance.
“I just needed a half a foot, I guess,” Keselowski said. “I got a really good push from the 5 down the frontstretch, but just wasn’t quite enough.”
Championship implications
The largest crash in Cup Series history involved 27 cars but also collected seven championship contenders in the process.
That included two-time champion Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe, Daniel Suarez and Austin Cindric, who are the four drivers below the cut line going into the second-round elimination race next weekend at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Cindric was leading with five laps to go when Cindric backed up to Keselowski, causing him to spin nose first into Stenhouse’s door. Cindric was then sideways in front of the whole field and nearly everyone collided into it.
It started with the field lapping Todd Gilliland, who had just served a pass-through penalty for speeding on pit road.
“When we had to pass (Gilliland) in 1 and 2, it stretched the whole bottom lane out,” Keselowski said. “The bottom had to move to the middle, the middle had to move to the top, and it just broke everybody up. It was a giant rubber band and the rubber band snapped back.”
Playoff drivers involved included Cindric, Briscoe, Logano, Suarez, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman.
“I just got turned at the front of the field,” Cindric said. “Unfortunately, that’s how Daytona ended for us and I think what that says is we’ve got really fast race cars and great execution. As the leader, I was trying to be as predictable as possible as far as taking pushes and it’s just a real shame. I don’t really feel like doing a whole lot of complaining about what happened or whose fault it is; it doesn’t really matter.
“It puts us in a must-win situation for the Charlotte road course. We’ve brought some exceptionally fast race cars every single race of the playoffs, and I cannot understate how proud I am of my race team and we’ll have to bring another one next week.”
Logano doesn’t have to win but his championship hopes were issued a significant blow due to what he chalked up as the circumstances of superspeedway racing.
“Everyone just gets more aggressive at the end of the races,” Logano said. “The [No.] 2 got out there a little bit more than what he had been and the [No.] 21 gave me a shove and transferred that to the [No.] 6. You can’t see what’s in front of you from there, and he got to the [No.] 2 with a fair amount of steam there.
“It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not Brad’s fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s just the product of the racing that we’ve got. Everyone is getting more and more aggressive as the laps wind down and it happens. It happens a lot.”
Elliott went from being in a position to challenge for the win to just one spot above the cutline.
“I thought Ricky and I had a really good system going there,” Elliott said. “I was really pleased with my spot. I thought I had a lot of what was going to transpire, was in my hands, which is what I want at the end of these things. Unfortunately, what was in my hands ended up biting us. I don’t really know what you do about that. We were in a good position. We executed a good second-half of the race. We were right there when it counted.
“I’m not sure how I got clipped. I thought I had it missed. Somebody just barely clipped me and it sent me spinning.”
Briscoe is going to have to win at the Roval.
“It’s not the day we wanted, just with the way everything went,” Briscoe said. “I don’t know what the points are, but I’m sure it’s not good. This is one of those races where if you didn’t run top five or whatever, you’re probably going to be in a must-win either way, so that probably makes it a little more clear now and puts it where it’s not on that bubble of, ‘well, should we go for points or should we just try to win the race.’
“At least now I feel it’s pretty obvious, so a frustrating day. It felt like there at the end we were in position and then I don’t know what happened. We had all the Fords in line and thought we were going to be really good and then the wreck happened.”
The crash actually saved Ryan Blaney who was involved in a crash at the end of stage two, as all the other cars destroyed in the big crash mitigated the points damage it did to him.
“I thought Austin and I worked well together,” Blaney said. “I had a feeling [Kyle Busch] would kind of pull out and help a Chevy, he wasn’t gonna help me obviously. So, we got in the middle and I didn’t think it was terrible. We were probably running fifth or sixth and then [Bowman] just drove straight through me in the trioval. Wrecked the fuck out of me. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
Nevertheless, the carnage minimized the damage it did to his chances since so many of his peers suffered similar misfortune. It also helped that Blaney scored 10 stage points throughout the race.
Fortuitous Denny
For a moment, it looked like Denny Hamlin was suffering from déjà vu.
Just like in the first round of the playoffs, Hamlin came away with no stage points and was involved in the Blaney, Chastain crash detailed above. The incident crumpled the nose of his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 and it was so slow that it actually helped him miss the largest crash in the history of the Cup Series.
“Well, since I was a mile and a half away from the wreck when it happened, I knew I was safe from getting in that,” Hamlin said with a chuckle. “But you know, through that pit cycle, the damage we had just made us too slow to hang onto the pack.
“So we needed something like that to happen to others’ misfortune for us to capitalize on it. And we somehow got a top 10 out of the damaged car we had.”
Put in perspective, Hamlin went from 17 points below the cutline before the massive crash to 30 above it at the checkered flag since he just drove past all 27 cars involved in the incident.
One of the best all-time at superspeedway racing, with three Daytona 500 wins to prove it, has struggled to finish these kinds of races with the third-year car. It looked like more of the same was going to bite him until it bit 27 others too.
Eventually the luck was going to turn around.
“Yeah, I mean, certainly you hope so,” Hamlin said. “You hope that the odds just eventually work themselves out but yeah, I mean, certainly today I feel very fortunate to be on the good end of missing it.”
That sentiment was also echoed by crew chief Chris Gabehart.
“Oh yeah, sure, because yeah, we’re struggling at these tracks to unlock the riddle that is getting stage points and finish well at the end,” Gabehart said. “We are clearly struggling so there we are running 32nd at the end, lost the draft with a torn up race car, and couldn’t go fast remotely on its own.
“It was bad, a lot like Watkins Glen.
“So to get that late caution and then the luck of the cars that crashed, that is a break we will take. Our Gen7 speedway record has went the other way so it was nice to have one come our way.”