Superspeedways and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. go together like peanut butter and jelly—or maybe more like nitro and a match. Sunday at Talladega was no exception. Amid a day of carnage, chaos, and a historic pileup, Stenhouse emerged with his fourth career NASCAR Cup Series win—all of them, unsurprisingly, at the high-speed bingo halls of Daytona and Talladega. His last win? The 2023 Daytona 500, a moment that now feels like a decade ago.
“Man, this team has put a lot of hard work in,” Stenhouse mused, clearly savoring his moment in the spotlight. “Obviously, we haven’t won since the 500 in ’23. It’s been an up-and-down season. It was a lot of hard work this season just trying to find a little bit of speed, but we knew that this track is one of ours to come get. So for all of our Southern Mississippi people, appreciate you all coming. This means a lot, winning here.”
The race itself was an all-you-can-eat buffet of chaos: 66 lead changes, a colossal crash involving 28 cars, and a Playoff standings shake-up that left teams and fans teetering on the edge of insanity. But with five laps to go, the infamous “Big One” came barreling in like a wrecking ball. Austin Cindric, fresh off a Stage 2 win, slowed coming into Turn 3 and got tagged by Chris Buescher. The result? Pure mayhem. When the smoke finally cleared, 23 cars were scattered like a child’s forgotten toys, and the Playoff hopes of Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe, and Cindric were smashed to pieces.
The survivors? William Byron, Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, and Denny Hamlin, barely scraping through the wreckage. And yes, this was the biggest crash in NASCAR Cup Series history.
With four laps remaining, NASCAR had to throw the red flag, stopping the field for just over eight minutes while they tried to piece together the mess and make sense of what had just happened. Then, of course, it was time for Talladega’s specialty: the overtime finish.
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The battered and bruised survivors lined up, with Stenhouse and Brad Keselowski leading the charge. Some in the top ten worried about running dry on fuel, but that didn’t matter. It was Talladega, where subtlety goes to die. The result? A three-wide, tire-shredding photo finish with Stenhouse barely edging out Keselowski by a razor-thin .006 seconds, while William Byron nipped at their heels on the outside. Kyle Larson and Erik Jones rounded out the top five.
“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.”
Byron was the highest finishing Playoff driver, and his third place spot was good enough to clinch his spot in the next round of the Playoffs.
“I didn’t have a chance to get the lead myself on the last lap, so that was the thought process,” Byron said. “I just couldn’t quite get him clear into (turn) three, or he didn’t take it into three. And then, I just kind of had to be diligent to push him the rest of the way. I felt like it all worked out. I’m happy for Ricky (Stenhouse Jr.) and everyone at Chevrolet. They deserve it. Ricky is a really good drafter.”
Not everyone had a storybook day. Playoff driver Daniel Suárez’s weekend started on a sour note Saturday, and things only got worse on Sunday. After being sent to the back for unapproved adjustments, Suárez’s car chief was ejected, and he had to serve a pass-through on lap one. Trying to claw back into the race, he got caught up on lap 12 while hanging in the middle lane, and when BJ McLeod got into him, it was a one-way ticket into the outside wall. Though he limped along, Suárez lost two laps making repairs, and any chance of a good day went with it.
The first Stage was a four-wide frenzy, with the kind of tension that makes fans wonder why they risk a second beer. Kyle Larson radioed in his thoughts after it ended: “That was way more intense than Stage 1 should be. Holy f—.” Yet, despite the tension, Stage 1 closed out relatively clean, with Chris Buescher taking the win. The real chaos was waiting at the end of Stage 2.
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Coming to the green-checkered flag to end Stage 2, Ryan Blaney got a shove from Alex Bowman and shot up into the outside wall, right in front of Ross Chastain. Chastain’s day ended there, his Chevy coming to a smoking halt between Turns 1 and 2. Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano picked up some dents but managed to keep going. Blaney, meanwhile, dragged his wounded car across the line sideways for eighth place before finally calling it a day—a noble, if messy, DNF. It marked his seventh DNF of the season, a career-high for the reigning champion.
Behind Stenhouse, Bell crossed the line sixth, Justin Haley seventh, with Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace, and Hamlin rounding out the top ten.
By the time the debris was cleared and the dust settled, William Byron had clinched his way into the next round on points. Bell, Larson, Hamlin, Bowman, Blaney, Reddick, and Elliott sit above the cutoff line. For Logano, Suárez, Cindric, and Briscoe, it all comes down to a last-ditch effort at the Charlotte ROVAL next Sunday. It’s win or go home—and after the demolition derby at Talladega, no one’s feeling too safe.
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.
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