Stenhouse Wins In Photo Finish at Talladega

The 2024 NASCAR Season continued to provide yet another exciting photo finish at the line, when on an overtime restart, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who most recently won the 2023 Daytona 500, held off Brad Keselowski and William Byron to win the race.

Stenhouse, who won by 0.006 over Keselowski, earned his fourth career win, his second at Talladega, and his second with JTG-Daugherty Racing. It also marks a crucial win for the team, as rumors have been swirling of long-time sponsor Kroger leaving the team for RFK Racing next season.

It began to go down when a massive pileup took place with five laps to go that marked 28 cars involved, potentially one of the largest in Cup Series history. After a red flag for clean-up, the 36-year-old Mississippi native Stenhouse had the lead at the restart. He was able to keep his No. 47 Chevrolet in position to win the race from the restart to the checkered flag.

This marks the third time in the five playoff races that a non-playoff driver went to victory lane.

“Felt really good, we had our Chevy teammates behind us and I was hoping Kyle [Busch] wouldn’t push the six [Keselowski] that hard, I knew the 24 was going to try to get to the line,” said Stenhouse after the race, who proceeded to climb completely over the catch fence and into the flag stand.

“Man, this team has put a lot of hard work in and obviously we haven’t won since the Daytona 500 in ’23. It’s been an up-and-down season, a lot of hard work this season trying to find a little bit of speed, but we knew this track is one of ours to come get it.”

Up until the time of the massive pileup, Austin Cindric was battling back-and-forth with Stenhouse for the lead, when he was hit from behind by Brad Keselowski, sending him around and collecting others. Other notable drivers involved were Joey Logano and Chase Briscoe.

“Obviously incredibly frustrated,” Cindric said. “Just really proud of my team and the full execution of the day. We got that stage win [second stage] and put ourselves at the front of that green flag pit cycle and had another shot [to win].

“I don’t feel like complaining right now. I’m too pissed off and it won’t do anything. But proud of the team. We’ve brought really fast race cars to every single race of the playoffs and we’re going to have to bring another one next week and I need to go out and do my job.”

Cindric’s Penske teammate and two-time champion Joey Logano also felt frustrated but felt like there was nothing he could do to avoid the wreck.

“I don’t think we could have done anything much different,” Logano said. “We had the bottom working fairly well and by the time we got off [turn] two, the push from the 21 [Burton] that transferred to the six (Keselowski) that transferred to the 2 [Cindric] just at a bad angle. And off he went.”

Cindric would finish 32nd and Logano would finish 33rd.

Defending race winner and 2023 champion Ryan Blaney was on his way to having a good points day until being involved in a wreck coming to the end of stage two, when Alex Bowman got into the back of his No. 12 Ford, collecting him and last week’s winner Ross Chastain. Blaney would end up 39th and Chastain 40th.

Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson finished fourth, tying his best-ever Talladega finish and only his second top-five at the track in 20 races. Erik Jones of Legacy Motor Club finished out the top five. Christopher Bell was sixth, followed by Justin Haley, Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace, and Denny Hamlin to finish the top ten.

William Byron was the only driver to secure a spot in the Round of 8, while Christopher Bell is above the cutline by 57 points, followed by Larson, Hamlin, Bowman, Blaney, Reddick, and Chase Elliott. As for Elliott, he is 13 points ahead of Logano going into next week’s race. Daniel Suarez had a rough day, as he had to serve a pass-thru penalty for equipment violations at the start of the race. However, he would rally to a 26th-place finish and is now 20 points behind Elliott for that final transfer position. Cindric and Briscoe are 29 and 32 points back.

he final race of the Round of 12 is next Sunday, the Bank of America ROVAL 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, with a new configuration, this coming Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern.