Ryan Blaney can rest a bit easier now. No doubt he will need that rest after he survived a wild and chaotic final 13 laps after a late race restart Sunday to win at Talladega Superspeedway over Kevin Harvick by .012 of a second as cars crashed behind him.
The races fourth and final caution came with 16 laps to go for debris on the backstretch. Blaney was second when the green came out with 13 to go and shoved Kevin Harvick to the lead on the outside of a two lanes battle. There was a total of 70 lead changes on the day with 6 of those coming in the final laps. Harvick took the lead on lap 184 and had the point with 2 laps to go but Blaney who had jumped to the lead on the bottom lane was side by side with Harvick when they took the white flag.
The two were side by side coming out of Turn 4 and has they charged towards the line, Riley Herbst on the outside in third was shoved from behind and send down into Chase Elliott setting off a multicar melee as Blaney, who won Stage 1, crossed the line slightly ahead of Harvick for the win.
Blaney admitted he wasn’t sure how he won.
“I don’t really know,” Blaney said. “It was a pretty wild restart, but let alone the last couple of laps losing momentum and getting it back, just getting clear to the bottom to get to the front row and drag race it out with Kevin.
“I have to give a big thanks to Riley Herbst. He did a really good job there the last couple restarts. He doesn’t have a lot of Cup starts, but he did a great job and pushed me so thanks to him. This is so cool.”
In his final year as a full-time Cup driver, Harvick initially finished his final Talladega race as the runner up. In post race inspection however, he was disqualified for a violation with the windshield fashioners which were not secured throughout the event and must be secured.
With the Harvick disqualification William Byron was moved up to second, while Denny Hamlin overcame a pit road speeding penalty early in the race, was third. Corey LaJoie emerged from the spinning pack to grab fifth.
“Not how we drew it up,” Hamlin said. “But a dub is a dub and that was a dub in our book – it’s as close as it gets to it. I’m proud of this whole Mavis Toyota team for bringing me a car fast enough to win. When I had to go there, I could and made the right moves at the right time and a top-five is a long way from where we were with about 15 laps to go.”
A tame race by Talladega standards that featured only 5 cautions had two crashes beyond the third one that ended the race,
The first came on the final lap of Stage 1 when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. who was leading ran out of fuel and slowed; Kyle Busch just behind was forced into the outside wall entering Turn 3. He then shot down and clipped the front of Ross Chastain’s Chevy sending Chastain spinning, into the outside wall and the first car out of the race.
The second came on lap 161 when Brad Keselowski who Stage 2 was pushing Carson Hocevar down the frontstretch when Hocevar spun down into Austin Dillon and Ty Gibbs. Keselowski became the second of the two Playoff drivers to be scored with a DNF, 32nd.
“I just feel bad for Carson,” Keselowski said. “I gave him a little push and it just took off on him. It wadded up a bunch of cars and it’s unfortunate, but we were having a good day with our Solomon Plumbing Ford. We were leading laps and won the second stage. I got shuffled there a few laps earlier and were trying to claw back and it all just gathered up.”
The crash forced a red flag of just under 10 minutes as NASCAR repaired the SAFER barrier.
Austin Cindric led the second most laps on the day, 15, and finished fifth. Justin Haley was sixth, Chase Elliott slid across the start-finish line sideways and finished seventh, Ryan Preece and Herbst also slid across the line eighth and ninth respectively. With the Harvick DQ, Daniel Suarez moved up to 10th.
Playoff drivers outside the top 10: Kyle Larson was 13th, Christopher Bell 15th, Tyler Reddick 16, Martin Truex Jr. 18, Chris Buescher 19th. Bubba Wallace failed to earn any Stage points and finished 23rd.
Kyle Busch had some damage on his Chevy from the lap 60 crash but ran inside the top 10 much of the day only to fade in the closing stage to finish 25th.
Other notables: Non-Playoff driver Joey Logano who led the most laps 48, finished 24th while polesitter Aric Almirola was 17th.
Heading into the Charlotte ROVAL to close out the Round of 12 next week Reddick is just below the cutoff line minus 2 points. Chastain is 9 below, Wallace also 9 below and Busch 26 away from the cutoff.
“Outside by two is not really bad for us, I don’t think,” Reddick said. “As long as we left better than we came in, I felt good about our chances. It’s pretty straight forward right. I think we will have to go after stage points, but that is okay. If we can get 20 there, I’m sure we can salvage a good finish and make it to the round of 8.”
For Blaney after a 28th place finish at Texas a week prior he came into Talladega 11 points below the cutoff. Now after his third Talladega win, he heads to the ROVAL knowing his spot in the next round is secure.
“Yeah, definitely makes it a lot easier for sure” he said. “Honestly, I thought we did a good job after Texas. I made a mistake, sped, put us in the back, got us in a wreck. Now we’re below the cut line.
Our group did a really good job of just staying calm, understanding we have two more races left. Let’s go try to do our job, and whatever happens, happens. So we did a good job of kind of maintaining our mental stability after Texas, but yeah, I mean, it’s just so much pressure off whenever you can win in one of these races and one of the rounds. Especially the first or second. It just relieves you.
“I talked to William today at driver intros, and he is, like, This is the most fun speedway race I’m ever going to have because I don’t have to stress about it. You kind of just feel free.
It does take some pressure off. I mean, you go try to win the race next week for sure, but maybe you can be a little bit more aggressive on stages or back. Maybe you flip to stages and try to go win the race instead of having to go get points in the stages.
“I feel like a lot of guys are going to have to do that if they’re on that agenda of being close to the cut line, so it just kind of changes the way you approach it a little bit too. Yeah, very relieving. That’s for sure. ”
Race Results
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.