NASCAR: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins at Talladega after a record-setting crash

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Ricky Stenhouse Jr. scored his first NASCAR Cup Series win since the 2023 Daytona 500 at Talladega on Sunday. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

A non-playoff driver has won a NASCAR Cup Series race for the second week in a row.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. beat Brad Keselowski in an overtime photo finish after the biggest crash in NASCAR history.

Stenhouse got a push from William Byron to get past Keselowski in the trioval. Keselowski, a six-time winner at Talladega, didn’t get enough momentum from Kyle Larson behind him to get past Stenhouse before the finish line.

The massive crash took out nearly everyone at the front of the field with less than five scheduled laps to go. Austin Cindric was leading the bottom line race when he got turned ahead of everyone else ahead of Turn 3 when Joey Logano gave Brad Keselowski a shove into Cindric.

Keselowski and Stenhouse escaped unscathed as they were able to avoid the wreck.

The wreck was simply the byproduct of what happens at the end of superspeedway races in the Cup Series these days. Drivers know they have to push each other to make passes. And when a push isn’t square on a driver’s bumper, chaos can ensue.

“I don’t think we could have done anything much different,” Logano said about the pushing among the drivers in the low line.

Officially, 28 drivers were involved in the crash.

It’s the first win for Stenhouse since he won the 2023 Daytona 500. All four of Stenhouse’s career Cup Series wins have come at either Daytona or Talladega and it’s his second win for the single-car JTG-Daugherty Racing team.

Next week’s race at the Charlotte Roval is the last race in the second round of the playoffs. Four of the 12 playoff drivers will be eliminated after the race, and Byron is the only driver who has already clinched a spot in the round of eight.

1. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

2. Brad Keselowski

3. William Byron

4. Kyle Larson

5. Erik Jones

6. Christopher Bell

7. Justin Haley

8. Austin Dillon

9. Bubba Wallace

10. Denny Hamlin

11. Martin Truex Jr.

12. Cody Ware

13. Ty Gibbs

14. Carson However

15. Shane van Gisbergen

16. Alex Bowman

17. Chris Buescher

18. Corey LaJoie

19. Kyle Busch

20. Tyler Reddick

21. Zane Smith

22. BJ McLeod

23. Todd Gilliland

24. Anthony Alfredo

25. Noah Gragson

26. Daniel Suarez

27. JJ Yeley

28. AJ Allmendinger

29. Chase Elliott

30. Chase Briscoe

31. John Hunter Nemechek

32. Austin Cindric

33. Joey Logano

34. Harrison Burton

35. Ryan Preece

36. Josh Berry

37. Michael McDowell

38. Daniel Hemric

39. Ryan Blaney

40. Ross Chastain

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