Chase Elliott made the move for the win with a lap and a half to go in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Using the speed from a shove from Denny Hamlin, Elliott moved to the high line in front of Erik Jones as the leaders raced down the backstretch. He then moved alongside leader Ryan Blaney as the field thundered towards the white flag.
Elliott and Blaney raced side-by-side for most of the final lap, with Elliott moving into the lead as the pack raced into the tri-oval for the final time.
Blaney tried one last time to get a run, but it was Elliott threw the block to be first across the finish line to score the victory.
“Yeah, it was a wild last couple laps,” Elliott said. “I wasn’t super crazy about being on the bottom. Fortunately I got just clear enough off of two to slide up in front of Erik. He gave me some great shoves.”
“Yeah, just had a good enough run to get out front, then I was able to stay far enough in front of Ryan here at the line to get it done,” Elliott added.
“These things are so, so hard to win. You got to enjoy ’em. Just appreciate everybody’s effort today.”
It’s the fifth win of the season for the Dawsonville, Georgia driver, and the 18th of his series career.
More importantly, it locks Elliott into the Round of 8 of the Playoffs as the cutoff race looms next weekend at Charlotte. He is the only Playoff driver to win so far in the Playoffs.
“It gets you through the next one,” said Elliott. “That’s all you can ask for, is to have more opportunities. That’s really what this is about. We got six more Playoff points to go with that win today. That’s a big deal.”
It’s a solid rebound for Elliott, who was eliminated in a fiery crash the week before at Texas Motor Speedway, sending him plummeting down the Playoff standings.
“We’re excited for these final handful of events,” Elliott said. “Hopefully we can make it out to Phoenix and give them a run.”
Blaney had the lead after the final restart, which was set up by a late caution when the car of Daniel Hemric stalled at the end of pit road. That left a two lap shoot-out for the win.
Blaney’s second place finish left him wondering what he could have done differently on the final run to the checkered flag.
“I think the only thing I probably would have done different is, one, realize that the 11 (Denny Hamlin) was laying off the 34 (Michael McDowell) in the middle of three and four and faded back with them,” said Blaney, who leaves Talladega second in the Playoff standings. “It just happened really quick and then I probably would have coming to the checkered – if we would have won or not, I don’t know – but got back to the bottom – kind of do the fake high, go low, but he was watching and I was kind of far back. I think it was gonna be too little too late anyway, but a couple things.”
Michael McDowell pushed Blaney to his runner-up finish, and came away with a third place result for his effort.
“It’s tough to be that close,” said McDowell. “I felt like I probably should have backed off of the 12 a little bit sooner when the 11 got off of me, but I was trying to make sure a Ford was gonna get to Victory Lane and we kept that momentum up. I wish I could get a re-do, but I’m proud of everybody at Front Row Motorsports on this Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang.”
Ross Chastain was in the mix all day, leading the most laps of the day – 36 of 188. In the end, he came home in fourth.
“We made a lot of moves, a lot of moves got made on us,” Chastain said. “There are 188 laps. I would say there’s two or three times a lap you have a decision to make. There’s two that stick out in my mind where I had control of the middle lane, and I went bottom. Needed to just stay middle. It was so weird. It was just different, it wasn’t weird. The cars ran better in the middle lane.”
Denny Hamlin topped off a solid day with a fifth place finish.
“We accomplished what we were trying to do,” said Hamlin. “What other guys did, we couldn’t change that. Would I like to have more, yes. We executed the day that we wanted to better than what we started the day. We’ll take it.”
Jones, Todd Gilliland, Daniel Suarez, Austin Cindric, and Chase Briscoe rounded out the top 10.
For a track known for its chaos and unpredictability, it was a fairly tame race incident wise, with only one caution of the six cautions on the day flying for a multi-car incident.
That came on lap 24, when Harrison Burton’s car spun off the front bumper of Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. as they raced into turn 1. Several other cars were gathered up, including Noah Gragson, Joey Logano, Cindric, Ty Gibbs, Justin Allgaier and Justin Haley.
Of those, only Burton and Gibbs were unable to continue.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” said Burton. “I know he hit me and as soon as he did I was crossed up and going side-to-side. I don’t know what to do different. I pulled up kind of conservatively to give him time to prepare and I’m not sure why. He gave me a pretty hard shot for sure, but I don’t know if it was off line, where he was when he hit me, or if I was moving while he was moving.”
“I think the 21 (Burton) just got a bad push and wrecked,” said Gibbs. “There was just nowhere for me to go.”
Meanwhile, it was a solid day for most of the Playoff field, with seven of the 12 eligible drivers finishing in the top 10.
The two Playoff drivers that took the biggest hits in the standings were Logano and Christopher Bell.
Logano, who came into the day on top of the standings, was a part of the lap 24 crash, and was never really a factor in the event after that. In the end, he would come home with a 27th place finish. That dropped him to fifth in the standings, 18 points above the cutoff.
Bell spun his car while coming to pit road during a round of green flat pit stops on lap 99. He was then hit with a pit road speeding penalty that left him a lap down. Bell finished 17th on the day in the end.
Bell came into Talladega in 11th place in the standings, and remained there, some 33 points below the cutoff. He’s joined by Cindric (who is actually tied with Briscoe for the final transfer spot), William Byron, and Alex Bowman, who missed Sunday’s race due to concussion symptoms following last week’s race at Texas.
NASCAR Cup Series
Talladega Superspeedway – Talladega, AL
YellaWood 500 – October 2, 2022
1. (16) Chase Elliott (P), Chevrolet, 188.
2. (19) Ryan Blaney (P), Ford, 188.
3. (29) Michael McDowell, Ford, 188.
4. (6) Ross Chastain (P), Chevrolet, 188.
5. (3) Denny Hamlin (P), Toyota, 188.
6. (12) Erik Jones, Chevrolet, 188.
7. (34) Todd Gilliland #, Ford, 188.
8. (14) Daniel Suarez (P), Chevrolet, 188.
9. (17) Austin Cindric # (P), Ford, 188.
10. (5) Chase Briscoe (P), Ford, 188.
11. (33) Landon Cassill(i), Chevrolet, 188.
12. (9) William Byron (P), Chevrolet, 188.
13. (20) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 188.
14. (4) Aric Almirola, Ford, 188.
15. (21) Justin Haley, Chevrolet, 188.
16. (27) Bubba Wallace, Toyota, 188.
17. (1) Christopher Bell (P), Toyota, 188.
18. (2) Kyle Larson (P), Chevrolet, 188.
19. (7) Noah Gragson(i) (P), Chevrolet, 188.
20. (26) Kyle Busch, Toyota, 188.
21. (28) Cole Custer, Ford, 188.
22. (25) Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Chevrolet, 188.
23. (30) Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 188.
24. (18) Brad Keselowski, Ford, 188.
25. (23) Chris Buescher, Ford, 188.
26. (22) Martin Truex, Jr., Toyota, 188.
27. (11) Joey Logano (P), Ford, 188.
28. (8) Tyler Reddick, Chevrolet, 187.
29. (24) Kevin Harvick, Ford, 187.
30. (31) Justin Allgaier(i), Chevrolet, 186.
31. (36) J.J. Yeley(i), Ford, 184.
32. (37) Cody Ware, Ford, 184.
33. (35) B.J. McLeod(i), Ford, 182.
34. (13) Daniel Hemric(i), Chevrolet, Electrical, 180.
35. (32) Corey LaJoie, Chevrolet, Accident, 44.
36. (15) Harrison Burton #, Ford, Accident, 23.
37. (10) Ty Gibbs(i), Toyota, Accident, 23.
Average Speed of Race Winner: 153.569 mph.
Time of Race: 3 Hrs, 15 Mins, 23 Secs. Margin of Victory: 0.046 Seconds.
Caution Flags: 6 for 25 laps.
Lead Changes: 57 among 17 drivers.
Lap Leaders: C. Bell (P) 0;A. Almirola 1-2;R. Chastain (P) 3-5;A. Almirola 6-7;R. Chastain (P) 8-13;E. Jones 14-15;R. Chastain (P) 16;E. Jones 17-20;R. Chastain (P) 21-22;E. Jones 23-25;C. LaJoie 26;K. Busch 27-29;D. Suarez (P) 30;C. Elliott (P) 31-33;D. Suarez (P) 34;A. Almirola 35;D. Hamlin (P) 36-38;A. Almirola 39;D. Hamlin (P) 40-42;A. Almirola 43;D. Hamlin (P) 44-50;C. Custer 51-52;D. Hamlin (P) 53-55;W. Byron (P) 56;D. Hamlin (P) 57-59;R. Blaney (P) 60-61;M. Truex Jr. 62;K. Larson (P) 63-64;E. Jones 65-66;R. Blaney (P) 67-71;E. Jones 72;A. Almirola 73-76;T. Gilliland # 77;E. Jones 78;A. Almirola 79-103;T. Reddick 104-110;K. Larson (P) 111-112;T. Reddick 113-115;K. Larson (P) 116;T. Reddick 117;K. Larson (P) 118-119;C. Elliott (P) 120-122;L. Cassill(i) 123;C. Elliott (P) 124-126;E. Jones 127;C. Buescher 128;R. Chastain (P) 129-152;R. Blaney (P) 153-160;D. Hamlin (P) 161;K. Larson (P) 162;R. Blaney (P) 163-168;E. Jones 169;R. Blaney (P) 170;E. Jones 171;R. Blaney (P) 172-179;E. Jones 180-186;R. Blaney (P) 187;C. Elliott (P) 188.
Leaders Summary: (Driver, Times Lead, Laps Led) Ross Chastain (P) 5 times for 36 laps; Aric Almirola 7 times for 36 laps; Ryan Blaney (P) 7 times for 31 laps; Erik Jones 10 times for 23 laps; Denny Hamlin (P) 6 times for 20 laps; Tyler Reddick 3 times for 11 laps; Chase Elliott (P) 4 times for 10 laps; Kyle Larson (P) 5 times for 8 laps; Kyle Busch 1 time for 3 laps; Daniel Suarez (P) 2 times for 2 laps; Cole Custer 1 time for 2 laps; Corey LaJoie 1 time for 1 lap; Landon Cassill(i) 1 time for 1 lap; Martin Truex Jr. 1 time for 1 lap; William Byron (P) 1 time for 1 lap; Todd Gilliland # 1 time for 1 lap; Chris Buescher 1 time for 1 lap.
Stage #1 Top Ten: 12,11,9,2,22,47,18,5,48,43
Stage #2 Top Ten: 9,31,5,99,43,1,77,17,16,14
Playoff Standings: 1. Chase Elliott* – 3103 (5 Wins); 2. Ryan Blaney – 3101; 3. Ross Chastain – 3097 (2 Wins); 4. Denny Hamlin – 3090 (2 Wins); 5. Joey Logano – 3087 (2 Wins); 6. Kyle Larson – 3087 (2 Wins); 7. Daniel Suarez – 3081 (1 Win); 8. Chase Briscoe – 3069 (1 Win); 9. Austin Cindric – 3069 (1 Win); 10. William Byron – 3058 (2 Wins); 11. Christopher Bell – 3036 (1 Win); 12. Alex Bowman – 3015 (1 Win).
* Locked Into The Round of 8
(i) Ineligible for driver points in this series, (P) Playoff driver
