Austin Cindric held off Ryan Preece by 22-thousandths of a second to claim his first victory of the season and give Team Penske its first win of the year, Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
It is Cindric’s third career victory and snaps a 30-race winless streak.
“We talk about it in every single one of those meetings why we haven’t won one of these races, just really proud of the effort,” Cindric told Fox after the race.
Cindric is the 10th different winner in the last 10 races at Talladega.
After crossing the finish line, Cindric screamed on his team’s radio in exaltation, while Preece screamed on his team’s radio in frustration after missing out on his first Cup win.
“I’m happy, but as a racer you want to win,” Preece told Fox.
Kyle Larson finished third, William Byron placed fourth and Joey Logano was fifth in a race that did not have a caution in the final stage and had only four cautions over 188 laps, including two for stage breaks.
Pit road mess collects Keselowski, Busch at ‘Dega
The first yellow of the Jack Link’s 500 waves for Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch as both drivers check up coming to pit road during the first round of green flag pit stops.
Ryan Blaney finished last in the 39-car field when his car was damaged as some teams slowed off Turn 4 to pit in the opening stage. Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch made contact. Blaney tried to get by the cars but hit Keselowski’s car, ending the race for both.
Brad Keselowski finished 38th. This marks the third of 10 races this season that Keselowski has failed to finish. He has finished 26th or worse in seven of 10 races this year.
“It was just a stack of guys trying to come to pit road as fast as they could and we were kind of the ham in the sandwich that got squeezed,” Keselowski said. “I waved down the backstretch to let everybody know I was gonna pit and I came off of (Turn) 4 and everybody was so tight behind me that I didn’t even have a chance to turn left.”
On the ensuring restart, a tap from Denny Hamlin caused Christopher Bell, who was leading the top line, to veer into Chris Buescher, who was leading the inside lane. Both shot down the track and hit the inside SAFER barrier on the backstretch. Both cars were eliminated.
Stage 1 winner: Kyle Larson
Stage 2 winner: Bubba Wallace
Next: The series races at 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday, May 4 at Texas Motor Speedway on FS1.
