TALLADEGA, Ala — NASCAR’s most popular driver wins in one of the more popular races on the schedule. Chase Elliott was victorious in Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at the Talladega Superspeedway to score his 18th career Cup Series victory including 5 of which this season. This one is the first among the 5 postseason races that a playoff driver won. By virtue of that, Elliott automatically advances to the Round of 8 in his No. 9 Chevrolet.
“That’s unreal,” an overjoyed Elliott exclaimed in front of the Alabama race fans. “Moments like that, you have to really cherish. You guys are what makes this special to me. So thank you sincerely. I really appreciate it.
“These things are so, so hard to win. You got to enjoy ’em. Just appreciate everybody’s effort today. NAPA, Chevrolet, all of our partners that make this happen. Everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, the engine shop. The boss is here, so excited to celebrate with him. Get ready to go to the Roval and try to grab another one.”
Daniel Hemric brought out the 6th and final caution of the day when his No. 16 Chevrolet stalled on pit road on Lap 181. At the time, it was looking like a race between Ryan Blaney and Erik Jones for the win. They had an intense side-by-side battle for several laps.
The yellow ended that intensity but brought forth a brand-new set of circumstances. It was now a 3-lap shootout for the win.
Elliott was 5th at the time of the caution and got some great help on the restart to move up to 2nd across the white flag.
“It was a wild last couple laps,” said Elliott. “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. Obviously a Team Chevy partner there.
“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.
“That was all on him (Erik Jones). “He was able to give me a really good shove. I didn’t feel like I did anything special. I think just the timing of how he got connected, and the two guys on the bottom were also connected, so they weren’t aggressively side drafting us, trying to pull us apart.
“Yeah, it was just good time. He did a really good job. I think he deserves a ton of credit for that. Obviously I’m very thankful he was that committed to me for the last lap and a half.
“I have a lot of respect for Erik. I’ve raced with him long enough to trust him in that situation to not turn me around. We certainly pushed right to the limit (smiling). It was a handful, but that’s kind of what you have to do in those scenarios. I thought he balanced that well.
“I was certainly concerned. I saw the 34 come unconnected with the 12 there in turn four. I thought that was my opportunity, so I tried to get down and pull Ryan back as hard as I could, get away, try to get clear. I thought that was my safest place to be.
“Yeah, when they get side by side again, I was a little worried about getting out there too far. When they got side by side that brief period of time, I thought that was enough for me to make it. I knew it was probably going to be close. Ryan was going to have such a good run, I didn’t really know how I was going to block it. Tried to waste as much time as I could and hope I got to the line first.”
It was Elliott’s 2nd Talladega win and just his 2nd top 5 since then. Blaney charged from 19th to finish 2nd in his No. 12 Ford for his 3rd top 2 result in his last 7 Talladega tries.
“Yeah, I definitely thought about it,” Blaney said of blocking Elliott’s final run. “The second lane was kind of the strongest, like, definitely the second half of the race. I thought about it. But when you go to the middle and you don’t have a Ford or teammate behind you, your chances of getting split are just so high.
“As much as I trust Chase, I don’t trust him not to take me three-wide and leave me in the middle. I just chose to stay down in front of Michael and he was awesome at pushing me the last restart, giving me great shots. Just a little bit too late.
“Maybe I could have faked the top, gone to the bottom on the front stretch. I don’t know if I would have got there anyway.
“Overall not a bad day. I’m probably going to replay in my head five different things I could have done different, but overall not a bad day. Appreciate Menards, Dutch Boy, Ford for what they do.”
Michael McDowell finished 3rd in his No. 34 Ford for his second third place result in his last 4 Talladega tries while Ross Chastain and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top 5.
“You always wish you get a redo,” McDowell said. “Unfortunately in motorsports you don’t get that. Good to be challenging for wins. When you come up short, it’s disappointing, for sure.
“But felt like the 12 and I were hooked up good, had a good run. Obviously when the 11 drug back off of me, that was probably my opportunity I needed to drag back off of the 12 a little bit sooner. Just kind of lost a little bit of that momentum, the energy. Just took a little bit too long to rebuild.
“It’s good to be close. It’s been a great season. Really proud of the season we’re having. Man, come up a car length short of Victory Lane, it’s tough for sure.”
For Hamlin he said there was nothing he could do. He was struck because you couldn’t make it 3 wide here this year with this car and make it work.
“Not much really,” Hamlin said on what more he needed today. “It’s so hard to pass. I know you’ve all heard that. It’s a train of two lines. You can’t run three-wide with this car. You got to just sit behind whoever is right there in front of you and hope you can push that line a little bit forward. Hopefully they switch the lanes, then you can leap forward.
“Yeah, that’s kind of what we got right now. I feel like we executed a pretty good day. Our goal going into the day was five stage points. If we got more than five in the first stage, we were going to punt in stage two, try to get a good finish. That’s what we did.
“Overall a good day. I was able to give Chase the push right there to get to the outside. I thought about should I go with him and force the 43 up. I always know I’ve got somebody coming with help behind me, McDowell.”
As far as why he didn’t go with him?
“Then I’d be in the middle,” Hamlin continued. “The risk wasn’t worth going back to 15th if I ended up getting stuck in the middle. To me, this is the three-race season that you have, you points race.”
Hendrick Back To Victory Lane On A Superspeedway After Rough Week
It was a disastrous week for Hendrick Motorports. However, Chase Elliott gave them reason to celebrate. On Tuesday, William Byron was penalized 25 points and dropped from above the cut line to below it. 48 hours later it was announced that Alex Bowman would be sidelined due to concussion like symptoms. He already was below the cutline.
With Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson not looking at their peak, how would they fare on Sunday. They had 3 cars starting in the top 10, how would they fare?
It was the one starting outside the top 10 that got the victory. This was just their 4th Talladega win in the last 30 races here with Elliott bringing them their only 2 wins (2019 spring race, today) here since this Fall race in 2015. Prior to that, they had 6 wins in an 8-race span. They still have a series leading 14 Talladega wins which is most ever. RCR is next best at 12.
For Daytona, Hendrick Motorsports is also tied with the Wood Brothers for most wins there in the NASCAR Cup Series. Each have 15. Both have also won those 15 races with 7 different drivers. However, HMS’ once dominance prowess has since cooled at the World Center of Racing too. They won 11 races between 1995 and 2015. In fact, 7 of those 11 occurred from July 2004 and July 2015. They’ve won the Coke Zero Sugar 400 race 6 times.
Since 2016 there, they have just 1 win. What’s bizarre is, it’s not like they’ve not shown up down here without speed. They’ve arguably had the fastest cars off the truck. It’s just that they’ve not had race day speed to correlate with race day handling.
Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and Elliott shared the front row at Daytona back in August. It was actually the 4th straight HMS pole at Daytona and 12th in the last 16 tries on the high banked 2.5-mile Florida superspeedway. The only 4 poles that they didn’t win was Greg Biffle (July 2016), Joey Logano (July 2019), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (February 2020) and Kevin Harvick (Aug. 2020). However, 2 of the 4 weren’t won on speed. Logano’s pole in 2019 was on points. Same for Harvick in 2020 as we didn’t qualify that year. However, they failed to win with having just 1 win in the last 13 Daytona races now. Elliott led the most laps (31) but none of them even scored a top 10.
Now they get the much-needed victory.
Safe Race
Safety was the name of the game this week as this new Next Gen’s durability was being scrutinized as we’ve now seen 2 drivers out with a head injury and another barely able to walk. Now we were racing at one of the more dangerous tracks on the schedule. Would we see anyone injured on Sunday?
Instead, it was a rather clean weekend. Jordan Anderson was airlifted out of here on Saturday but that was due to a fire. He’s since been released and back home.
The Xfinity Series race went without the “big one” and Sunday’s race saw just one but it didn’t damage many cars.
We saw 57 lead changes, 33 cars running and 27 of them on the lead lap at the drop of the checkered flag with the margin separated by just a few feet.
Between photo finishes for both stages and a photo finish in all 3 races, this was a great weekend of how racing should be on superspeedway’s.
“It was tame in the sense there was no wreck, but I think that was the most racy race from start to finish,” Chase Briscoe said. “We barely ever ran single-file, and these cars it’s so hard to make up ground. It seems like track position is such a big deal and you’ve got guys pushing so hard, just trying to maintain the lane that they’re in. I guess from my side of things it was really racy because you’re never really riding around. You’ve got to go so hard all the time and shove the guy in front of you. We never really got single-file around the top, but I was surprised we didn’t see a wreck. I was figuring with how out of control these cars are when you get pushes from the back, especially the big ones we were having there towards the end I figured something was gonna happen. I’m glad there wasn’t anything happening, but it was kind of a surprise to me. I think this place is a little bit easier than Daytona as far as being able to kind of keep it under control, but I the teams have done a really good job of getting the cars to drive way better. I think we all learned a lot at Daytona as far as what we need to do to our race car to be able to be pushed. They’re still out of control being pushed. I didn’t feel like I was as out of control as I have been the first three races, but they’re still a handful to drive when somebody is shoving you. I was definitely surprised we didn’t see a big wreck.”
Front Row Motorsports Quiet Day
In a vastly important playoff race, 2 of the top 3 non playoff driver finishers went to the Front Row Motorsports camp. Michael McDowell scored his 4th career Talladega top 10 finish with a third place result in his No. 34 Ford while Todd Gilliland was 7th in his No. 38 Ford. It was only his 2nd top 10 of the season as the other came back in late July on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
“You always wish you get a redo,” McDowell said. “Unfortunately in motorsports you don’t get that. Good to be challenging for wins. When you come up short, it’s disappointing, for sure.
“But felt like the 12 and I were hooked up good, had a good run. Obviously when the 11 drug back off of me, that was probably my opportunity I needed to drag back off of the 12 a little bit sooner. Just kind of lost a little bit of that momentum, the energy. Just took a little bit too long to rebuild.
“It’s good to be close. It’s been a great season. Really proud of the season we’re having. Man, come up a car length short of Victory Lane, it’s tough for sure.”
McDowell has 5 top 11 finishes in the last 7 races on the season and is trending in the right direction again as we inch closer to the end of the year.
“Well, I think we’ll be able to contend next week, too, when we go to the Roval,” he quipped. “I feel like we’re always strong on the road courses, this year in particular with this Next Gen car.
“We’ve been strong at a lot of racetracks. A lot of races still for us to go that we feel strong at. Homestead test went great. I’m proud of Blake Harris and this group. Bob Jenkins has given us all the tools to go out and be competitive. We’re getting to show it each week.
“To get through the season and not get a win would be disappointing, for sure.”
For Talladega, he had 0 top 10 finishes in his first 17 races here including 13 of those 17 races seeing him finish 26th or worse. In the last 7 races here, he’s had 4 top 10’s including 3 of which being in the top 5. He was also 3rd in the 2021 spring race.
Bell, Bowman Facing Must Wins In Charlotte ROVAL
Alex Bowman went from -26 to -54 by not racing this weekend due to concussion like symptoms. If he can get cleared to return to the seat of his No. 48 Chevrolet for next Sunday’s race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, he’s facing a must-win scenario in order to advance onto the Round of 8.
Bowman was 4th, 2nd, 8th and 10th respectively in his four ROVAL tries though. He also was runner-up at COTA earlier this season too. While his other 4 road course finishes (16th, 12th, 32nd, 14th) leave more to be desired, I like his past ROVAL stats and the momentum that he brings in.
He’s joined in the must-win category with some company. Christopher Bell (-33) is likely there too. He had a top 5 finish in literally all 3 first round races but two cut tires last week and being 17th on Sunday without any stage points puts him here.
Bell even started on the pole for Sunday’s race but was 20th in Stage 1 and 30th in Stage 2 (he was speeding). He did finish 8th on the ROVAL last year but Toyota’s worst tracks this season have been road courses.
Ryan Blaney (+32), Ross Chastain (+28) and Denny Hamlin (+21) are sitting pretty right now. Joey Logano (+18), Kyle Larson (+18) and Daniel Suarez (+12) hold spots 2nd-7th. Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric are tied for the 8th and final transfer spot while William Byron (-11) sits in 10th.
Blaney Excels, His Teammates Don’t
I felt like Team Penske should have fared better on Sunday in Talladega. Sure Ryan Blaney was 2nd in the end and had a stage win, but Joey Logano and Austin Cindric were really no where to be found in the 2nd stage on and that was by design. Score stage points in the first one, then drop to the back and wait. The big ones always occur so why not let the crashes happen and be one of the few unscathed after.
It’s just that the crashes never occurred.
Logano finished 5th in Stage 1, but 16th in Stage 2 and 27th in the end. He went from +37 to +18 despite those 6 stage points.
“We just wreck all the time so we thought, ‘Boy, we’ve got a big points lead, let’s just be smart and don’t wreck,’ and we’ll be able to get out of here with a top 10 assuming they would wreck because they always do,” Logano said. “That was the only time I’ve ever stayed in the back, ever, was today, and they didn’t wreck. We gave up a bunch of our points lead. We’re still plus-18, which is a decent spot to be, but the goal was to race for stage points and then drop to the back and wait for the crash. I hate racing that way. I’ve gotten beat many times from people that do that then I tried it, and it didn’t work.”
Cindric was 4th in Stage 1, 28th in Stage 2 and 9th in the end. He did go from -7 to tied but I thought he’d have a better day.
“Stage points are a big deal,” Cindric said. “Obviously, helping (Blaney) get a stage win was big and recovery from the wreck, damage control and driving back up through the field, I think when everybody kind of scatters to try and do what’s best for them, it’s very important to be decisive, and I was able to make some good moves and be able to be in some lanes that moved. Call it 50/50 decisiveness and 50 percent luck, but, overall, it certainly puts us in a good spot to race for a spot in the Round of 8 at the Roval, so we’ll put our best foot forward and have some fun next week.”
Top Stat
This was Chase Elliott’s 7th playoff win of his career tying him with Jeff Gordon and Greg Biffle for 11th all-time.
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