Bobby Travis · NASCAR/IndyCar Correspondent
From 11th to the checkered flag: Kyle Larson won the YellaWood 500 after a rollover, a red flag and a wild final dash in the draft.
Kyle Larson won the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, building a huge cushion in the Chase standings. The race, sent into overtime by a heavy crash five laps from the scheduled finish, ended with a last-lap charge by Larson from the middle of the pack that left his Hendrick teammate William Byron 0.041 seconds short in second. For several Chase drivers, though, the day turned into a nightmare.
Bell's pit road crash and the Big One in Stage 2
The title fight was thrown into disarray early. Christopher Bell, sitting just behind Larson in the Chase standings before the weekend, lost control of his No. 20 under green on his way to pit road and made contact with the inside wall. The resulting damage, including right-front tire failures, and a penalty for too many crew members over the wall cost him several laps, and he was left with 35th place, 12 laps behind Larson.
Stage 2 then brought the first real Big One of the day. At Talladega, where tight pack racing in the draft is the norm from start to finish, a loss of momentum by Ryan Blaney in the outside lane was enough to set off a chain reaction. After contact with Bubba Wallace, reports said about a dozen cars were involved within seconds, including other big names in Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin. Blaney was out of the race, while Elliott and Reddick battled on to the finish with heavy deficits, ending up 42 and 52 laps down respectively.
Logano's rollover brings out the red flag
Five laps from the scheduled finish, things came to a dramatic head at the front. Joey Logano, with Carson Hocevar on his bumper and Ross Chastain ahead of him, got turned sideways in the tri-oval, and his Ford hit the outside wall and flipped. The car slid on its roof across the start-finish line in a shower of sparks before the race was halted under a red flag. Logano was able to climb out of the wreck on his own. He and Riley Herbst, who also took a heavy hit, were evaluated at the infield care center and released.
Several more drivers were caught up in the crash. Riley Herbst first hit the outside wall, then slammed into the inside barrier at high speed and had to retire his destroyed car, and Austin Cindric suffered the same fate, unable to escape the scattering field after running a strong race with top-10 results in both stages. Brad Keselowski, who after a strong start with RFK teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece had finished Stage 1 in third, also failed to finish. After the stoppage, a green-white-checkered restart sent the race into overtime.
Larson's last-lap coup and what it means for the Chase
What followed was rare even by Talladega standards. On the backstretch of the final lap, Larson was still running 11th, far from any chance of winning. Ahead of him, Austin Hill ran out of fuel on the last lap while Ricky Stenhouse Jr. led the field. Larson built his momentum on the inside, surged forward through the tri-oval and edged ahead of Byron at the line by the narrowest of margins. Behind them, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ross Chastain and Cole Custer completed the top five after they, too, had picked their way through the debris of the closing laps.
This Sunday carries real weight in the Chase standings. Larson extended his lead over Denny Hamlin, who despite being caught up in the Big One got away lightly in eighth, to 73 points and heads to Martinsville in an extremely comfortable position. Christopher Bell, who had been right on Larson's heels before the race, dropped to third because of his pit road crash and now trails by 74 points. With only two races left, Martinsville and the finale at Homestead-Miami, the chasers have very little room left to close the gap to the Hendrick driver.
