NASCAR takeaways: Big (and historic) wrecks leave drivers frustrated at Talladega

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr. continued to show he can race well on the drafting tracks as he added to the growing list of non-playoff drivers who have salvaged their season with at least a victory.

Stenhouse edged Brad Keselowski across the finish line Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway to earn his first Cup win since the 2023 Daytona 500.

"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," said Stenhouse, who drives for the single-car JTG Daugherty Racing team co-owned by former NBA star Brad Daugherty.

Stenhouse was out front when a 28-car pileup — the biggest (as far as number of cars) in NASCAR Cup Series history — took out many potential winning cars as well as either wounding or knocking out several playoff drivers.

With a third-place finish, William Byron clinched a spot on points in NASCAR's semifinal round (Round of 8) while 11 drivers will vie for the final seven spots next Sunday at the Charlotte road course.

Takeaways from Talladega, where the only playoff drivers to finish in the top 10 were Byron, Kyle Larson (fourth), Christopher Bell (sixth) and Denny Hamlin (10th).

Big, Big Wreck

The 28-car pileup with four laps remaining was triggered when Joey Logano got into the back of Brad Keselowski, who turned Austin Cindric in front of the entire field as they ran in the bottom lane.

Keselowski said as they were trying to lap Todd Gilliland, who had lost the draft because of a pit-road speeding penalty, they got a little too stretched out and then the draft sucked them in too quickly.

"When [Gilliland] blocked the bottom lane with all the Fords in it, it caused us all to react — we stretched the rubber band and it snapped back down the backstretch," Keselowski said. "I caught the 2 car [of Cindric] and checked up [off the throttle] a little bit and the 22 [of Logano] came and hit me and all three of us ran into each other.

"I don't really think Austin or Joey did anything wrong. I don't know what I could do any different." 

Cindric and Logano, the two playoff drivers knocked out of the wreck, lamented how they seemed to be in solid position with all the Fords working together.

"It's just an off-center push and that's the easiest thing to spin a guy out. ... I don't see any fault on Joey's end there — he wasn't locked to the 6 [of Keselowski] while the 6 gave me the push," Cindric said. "Was it frustrating? Yeah. I couldn't be any more pissed than I am, but it's not going to change anything." 

Both Cindric and Logano will need to have stellar performances at Charlotte next week and need help to advance.

"The 2 got out there a little bit more than he has been, and the 21 [of Harrison Burton] gave me a shove and transferred that to the 6 and he got to the 2 with a fair amount of steam," Logano said. "It's not anybody's fault. It's not Brad's fault." 

Blaney Furious With Bowman

Defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney was out of the race by the end of the second stage as Alex Bowman tried to give him a push and ended up turning him.

"The 48 [of Bowman] just drove straight through me in the tri-oval," Blaney said. "He just wrecked the [expletive] out of me. I don't know what he's thinking. I thought he would have more sense than that, but obviously he didn't.

"I see him hauling ass toward me and you think, ‘You kind of have to lift a little bit. You can't just run wide open through somebody in the tri-oval.' But he did."

Bowman said it was his mistake.

"It was a bad push," Bowman said. "I lifted as I rolled up to him but certainly not enough. I had been pushed there a couple times and if I would have gotten to him 100 feet later, he would have been OK.

"He was still turning enough that it obviously hooked him. ... I was just trying to push him forward and obviously it was a bad push."

But with the big accident in the race, Blaney left the track in the same position as he started — 25 points above the cutline.

NASCAR Adjusts Wrecked Car Rules

NASCAR didn't announce a change in interpretation of its damaged vehicle policy prior to the race but made an obvious adjustment to it following the big wreck.

NASCAR previously had determined that if a car couldn't get to pit road under its own power after having contact with another car or the wall, the driver must get out of the car and be out of the race.

But after Josh Berry didn't seem to have much damage and was knocked out of the race last week in the opening lap at Kansas, NASCAR reconsidered that strict interpretation and towed some vehicles back to pit road Sunday.

The two vehicles — Chase Briscoe and Chase Elliott — were both playoff drivers.

"Our goal is never to put good cars out of the race," NASCAR Senior Vice President Elton Sawyer said. "Based on our experiences last week at Kansas and what happened there with the 4 car [of Berry], we felt like we probably could have made a different call there.

"We had a good car that probably just needed tires. As we went into this, we wanted to err on the side of the competitor."

After the big wreck, NASCAR eventually lifted the red flag (which stops the race with no work allowed to be done on the cars) to yellow with the expectation that the caution car would then begin leading the cars stopped on the track back around with the race resumed.

But after NASCAR went from red to yellow, officials realized they needed to do more cleanup, leaving some cars still on the track waiting to roll and get to pit road for repairs while the cars already on pit road at the time the race was stopped could start working on them. 

"We still had safety equipment that was still moving, so for safety for all, held the caution vehicle a little longer," Sawyer said. "Totally understand the competitors [arguing] that we had cars on pit road that got a little more opportunity to do some work." 

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.