TALLADEGA, Ala. — With a big damage mark on the side of his car from an enormous wreck, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. raced to victory in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega by inches ahead of Brad Keselowski.
Stenhouse beat Keselowski by six one-thousandths of a second in the side-by-side finish. William Byron finished beside both of them in third, half a car length from victory.
"It's been an up-and-down season -- a lot of hard work just trying to find speed," Stenhouse said after the win. "We knew this track was one of ours to come get."
Stenhouse acknowledged the victims of Hurricane Helene during his post-race interview, including the family of Brad Daugherty, one of the co-owners of Stenhouse's team, JTG Daugherty Racing.
An enormous wreck took out a large chunk of the field with four laps remaining. Brad Keselowski bumped Austin Cindric, sending him spinning across the field. Alex Bowman, Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe, Harrison Burton, Daniel Hemric, Chris Buescher, and several others were involved in the wreck. The 28-car crash was the largest in Talladega's history for a NASCAR Cup Series race.
The wreck left Stenhouse, Keselowski, Byron, and Kyle Larson as some of the only remaining contenders.
Michael McDowell started on the pole and held the lead early on. Playoff driver Daniel Suárez was forced to serve a pass-through penalty at the beginning of the race because of a pre-race adjustment. Suárez was wrecked while trying to blend into the field, just 12 laps into the race, and was trapped a lap down for most of the event.
No other cautions happened besides the stage breaks. Ryan Blaney and Ross Chastain were taken out of the race in a crash coming to the finish of stage two.
Cindric, Logano, and Briscoe took major points hits in the late race crash and sit out the outside looking in with one more race before the Round of 8 cutoff.
Byron earned enough points to lock himself into the next round. Elliott is eighth in the playoff standings, 13 points ahead of Logano. The Oct. 13 race at the Charlotte Roval will decide who moves on to the next round.
