TALLADEGA, AL. – Chase Elliott of Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet) shot to the lead in a web of traffic in the final 5 miles and won Sunday’s 500-mile NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Following Elliott at the finish were Ryan Blaney, Michael McDowell, Ross Chastain, and Denny Hamlin. Elliott’s win is the first by a playoff driver in this year’s playoffs. It will mark Elliott’s sixth appearance in that playoff round.
Chase Elliott won the YellaWood 500 to score his 18th career NASCAR Cup Series victory, his fifth of the season, and his second at Talladega. His margin over second-place Ryan Blaney was .046 of a second.
There were six caution periods for a total of 25 laps. Twenty-seven of the 37 drivers in the YellaWood 500 finished on the lead lap.
Stage 1 Winner: Ryan Blaney of Team Penske (Ford)
Stage 2 Winner: Chase Elliott of Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet)
SHR Race Finish:
- Chase Briscoe (Started 5th, Finished 10th / Running, completed 188 of 188 laps)
- Aric Almirola (Started 4th, Finished 14th / Running, completed 188 of 188 laps)
- Cole Custer (Started 28th, Finished 21st / Running, completed 188 of 188 laps)
- Kevin Harvick (Started 24th, Finished 29th / Running, completed 187 of 188 laps)
SHR Points:
- Chase Briscoe (8th with 3,069 points, at the top-eight cutline)
- Kevin Harvick (16th with 2,071 points)
- Aric Almirola (20th with 663 points)
- Cole Custer (25th with 537 points)
Playoff Standings (With one race to go before Round of 8):
- Chase Elliott (3,103 points) 1 win
- Ryan Blaney (3,101 points) +32
- Ross Chastain (3,097 points) +28
- Denny Hamlin (3,090 points) +21
- Joey Logano (3,087 points) +18
- Kyle Larson (3,087 points) +18
- Daniel Suárez (3,081 points) +12
- Chase Briscoe (3,069 points) +0
- Austin Cindric (3,069 points) -0
- William Byron (3,058 points) -11
- Christopher Bell (3,036 points) -33
- Alex Bowman (3,015 points) -54
Briscoe earned his sixth top-10 of the season and his first top-10 in four career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega.
This was Briscoe’s fourth straight top-15. He finished 13th on Sept. 11 at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City and 14th on Sept. 17 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and fifth last Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.
It was a tame race in the sense there was no wreck, but I think that was the racy race from start to finish,” said Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Magical Vacation Planner Ford Mustang. “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 toward 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.”
Briscoe’s 10th-place result bettered his previous best finish at Talladega – 11th, earned in his first start at the track in April 2021. Briscoe finished 10th in Stage 2 to earn one bonus point.
Almirola earned his 14th top-15 of the season and his 16th top-15 in 26 career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega. Since joining SHR in 2018, Almirola only has two finishes outside the top 15 at Talladega.
Almirola led seven times for a race-high 36 laps to increase his laps-led total at Talladega to 107.
Custer led once for two laps to increase his laps-led total at Talladega to 10.
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Bank of America Roval 400 on Sunday, Oct. 9 in the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval. It is the sixth race of the 10-race NASCAR Playoffs and the final race in the Round of 12. The Bank of America Roval 400 starts at 2 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by NBC and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
