LINCOLN, Ala. -- In yet another contribution to the year of the photo finish in NASCAR, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. prevailed in a three-wide photo finish to win the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, beating both Brad Keselowski and William Byron to the line in an overtime finish. Stenhouse's margin of victory over Keselowski was 0.006, the third closest finish of the season.
After they made it past a 28 car crash -- the largest in the modern history of NASCAR -- with five laps to go, overtime set up a duel between Stenhouse and Keselowski, with Stenhouse receiving drafting help from Byron and Keselowski getting drafting help from Kyle Larson. Keselowski was momentarily clear of Stenhouse on the final lap, but a push from Byron allowed Stenhouse to get alongside Keselowski again and drag race him to the finish line before Byron swung out to try and win the race himself.
Stenhouse's win is the fourth of his Cup Series career, his second at Talladega, and his first since winning the Daytona 500 in 2023.
YellaWood 500 unofficial results
- #47 - Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- #6 - Brad Keselowski
- #24 - William Byron
- #5 - Kyle Larson
- #43 - Erik Jones
- #20 - Christopher Bell
- #7 - Justin Haley
- #3 - Austin Dillon
- #23 - Bubba Wallace
- #11 - Denny Hamlin
"We had our Chevy teammates behind us, and I was hoping Kyle wasn't going to push the 6 that hard. I knew the 24 was probably going to try and get to the line there," Stenhouse told NBC Sports. "But, man, this team has put a lot of hard work in. 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."
Stenhouse becomes the 18th different winner in the NASCAR Cup Series this season, which is one off of the record for most different winners in a single season that was last matched in 2022. The win also marks the third in team history for JTG Daugherty Racing, co-owned by NBA legend Brad Daugherty.
The Huge One
Throughout the day, the lead pack was tightly condensed yet incredibly disciplined, as the field ran three-wide -- and even sometimes four-wide -- many rows deep lap after lap. By the time the field made its final pit stops under green in the last 20 laps, things seemed to settle into a double file formation with Stenhouse and Austin Cindric racing for the win. But as is often seen at Talladega, it couldn't last and had the biggest of consequences.
After an accordion effect in the inside line led to Cindric getting turned into Stenhouse and spun in front of traffic, The Big One that occurred with five laps to go was more than just big: It was statistically the biggest crash in NASCAR's modern era, as 28 cars -- including eight playoff drivers -- ended up involved in the melee that occurred.
Among the playoff drivers involved included Cindric, Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe, Daniel Suarez and Christopher Bell. Bell was able to fight back to earn a sixth-place finish, Bowman and Briscoe were able to salvage top-20 finishes in 16th and 20th, while Suarez -- who had a very long day after a pre-race penalty and a crash in the going -- and Elliott would finish deep in the field in 26th and 29th. Cindric and Logano both failed to finish, ending up 32nd and 33rd.
All, at least, fared better than Ryan Blaney. Coming to the finish of Stage 2, Blaney was turned in the middle of traffic and slammed the outside wall, taking out Ross Chastain in the process in a grinding crash.
As a result of the way Sunday's race unfolded, William Byron was able to clinch a spot in the Round of 8 on points, with Christopher Bell (+57), Kyle Larson (+52), Denny Hamlin (+30), Alex Bowman (+26), Ryan Blaney (+25), Tyler Reddick (+14) and Chase Elliott (+13) enter the final race of the Round of 12 with double-digit points advantages over the cut line. Joey Logano (-13), Daniel Suarez (-20), Austin Cindric (-29) and Chase Briscoe (-32) all enter next week's race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in danger of being eliminated from the playoffs.
Policy Problems
As an after effect of the sheer size and scale of the crash on the back straightaway, an extensive cleanup with much for NASCAR officials to sort out as it pertained to which drivers could continue to compete and which couldn't under the sport's Damaged Vehicle Policy. Eventually, things got sorted out, but not without confusion reigning and competitors grumbling once again about the DVP.
After a controversial call a week ago in which NASCAR officials deemed that Josh Berry could not continue to compete after a Lap 1 accident because he could not drive his car back to the pits despite only having flat tires, several teams were again left upset with inconsistencies in which cars received a tow or push back to pit road and which did not, as well as the pace car not rolling when the red flag was lifted and the race returning to yellow flag conditions.
Over his team radio, Chase Briscoe -- who had to fight off track workers trying to tell him to get out of his car instead of getting pushed back to pit road -- remarked that he had "never seen a more disorganized deal in my life" over his team radio. Berry, whose race came to an end under the DVP for the second week in a row, had remarks that were even more curt.
"All I know is all those cars parked in turn 3 better not get towed to pit road, buddy, because that'd be breaking the damaged vehicle policy," Berry told reporters. "F--kin' 42 car is over there doing burnouts slinging rubber all over the safety workers trying to get going, but if you have four flat tires and you've got to get towed to pit road, you're done, right?"
NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer addressed reporters in post-race to clarify those issues, effectively issuing a mea culpa that they "probably could have made a different call" on Berry's accident at Kansas and that this week they elected to err on the side of the competitors. While Sawyer said that NASCAR feels that the damaged vehicle policy has worked well, he did open the door to potentially making changes to the policy in 2025.
"I think the program has worked well, there's some efficiencies that have worked really well, but obviously there's some things that we need to look at in the offseason, some learnings from this car and how we can better implement the DVP policy going forward," Sawyer said.
Nine of the 40 cars that started Sunday's race failed to finish it, all due to crash damage. That group included Cindric, Logano, Harrison Burton, Ryan Preece, Berry, Michael McDowell, Daniel Hemric, Blaney and Chastain.
Race results rundown
- After missing two races due to a back injury suffered in a crash there in the spring, Erik Jones was able to take something back from Talladega. Jones earned his first top-five finish of the season in fifth, and also earned his first top 10 since all the way back at the Daytona 500 in February, when he finished eighth.
- Skilled speedway racer Justin Haley demonstrated his proficiency at working the draft yet again on Sunday, earning a seventh-place finish for his third top 10 of the year and his best overall finish this season. Haley's top 10 comes in just his second start since moving to Spire Motorsports, and he also was credited with leading twice for four laps.
- Austin Dillon earned his fourth top-10 finish of the season with an eighth-place finish, a run that also marked his first top 10 since his controversial victory at Richmond in August. Dillon has now earned top-12 finishes in back-to-back weeks, the first time he's done that since he finished third at Bristol Dirt and then 12th at Martinsville in the spring of 2024.
- Cody Ware followed up a career-best fourth-place finish at Daytona with another strong superspeedway run, getting to the front of the field and leading one lap before recording a 12th-place finish. For Ware, it marked the first time he has led a Cup race since Atlanta in March 2023, where he also led a single lap.
- Nearing the end of his first full-time season of NASCAR racing, Sunday showed that Shane van Gisbergen has assimilated more and more into stock car and oval racing after never doing anything close to superspeedway racing in V8 Supercars. SVG led four times for a total of nine laps before finishing 15th.
- Officially, Sunday's race saw 66 lead changes among 24 different drivers recorded at the start/finish line.
Next race
The Round of 12 comes to a close and four drivers will be eliminated from the playoffs at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in the Bank of America Roval 400 next Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
