Tune into a NASCAR Cup Series broadcast at Daytona or Talladega and you’re sure to hear about “The Big One.” It’s the monkey wrench of nearly every superspeedway race where lots of cars get tangled up in lots of carnage. Like it so often does, it happened during this weekend’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega, and this time it was bigger than any other in modern NASCAR history.
With 27 cars involved, it affected more than two-thirds of the 40-car field. Austin Cindric was leading the bottom row of racers with just five laps to go when his No. 2 Ford was turned, forcing him into Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the No. 47 Chevrolet just above him. Cars went sliding up and down the banking with smoke blocking drivers’ views. It wasn’t long before the red flag was out and all action stopped for nine minutes.
You can see the wreckfest from multiple angles on the NBC broadcast here:
Seven championship contenders were implicated: Cindric, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe, and Daniel Suarez. That shakes things up drastically ahead of next Sunday’s playoff race at the Charlotte Roval, the final Round of 12 contest before the field narrows to eight. Logano was in a transfer spot but is now 13 points below where he needs to be if he wants a shot at a third Cup Series title. He and Cindric both failed to finish the race.
“Obviously incredibly frustrated,” Cindric said after the pile-up. “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.”
Logano, Suarez, Cindric, and Briscoe are the four drivers below the cutline heading into the Charlotte Roval.
The excitement didn’t stop there at Talladega as Stenhouse Jr. eventually won the race in a three-wide finish alongside Brad Keselowski and William Byron. He did it by the hair on his chin with only a .006-second margin to second. Stenhouse Jr. isn’t playoff-eligible, so he played the spoiler.
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