TALLADEGA, Ala. — The final laps of the Jack Links 500 turned into an all-out Ford vs. Chevy battle, and when the checkered flag flew, Ford’s Austin Cindric and Ryan Preece held off Chevy’s Kyle Larson and William Byron in a photo finish. Cindric, who snapped a 30-race winless streak, won by about a yard, just holding off Preece as the pack approached lapped traffic.
There’s an unspoken subtext to every Talladega race: The Big One. The massive, high-banked superspeedway provides perfect conditions for enormous, field-swallowing wrecks. They’re the kind of wrecks that both horrify and entice viewers, even if nobody really wants to admit it. This time around, while there were 67 lead changes and 23 leaders over the course of the race, the Big One didn’t happen, setting up a final sprint to the finish.
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For the first two stages, the only wrecks were relatively minor errors of judgment and execution. On lap 43, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney got tangled up during an attempted move onto pit road:
Nine laps later, Christopher Bell hit the wall hard following a push from Denny Hamlin:
“Denny didn’t do anything wrong,” Bell said after getting out of the car. “You have to push, you have to push to be successful. It’s a product of the cars we race with this rules package.”
The opening stages were as routine as Talladega gets; although the field ran as much as four-wide, the mistakes were few. Kyle Larson ended up winning the first stage, and Bubba Wallace the second.
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Aside from the early collisions that took out some of the race favorites, the only fireworks came from Joey Logano’s microphone. Incensed that teammate Austin Cindric didn’t push him to a stage win, he lit up his radio:
“Way to go Austin, way to go, you dumb [censored]! Way to [censored]ing go,” Logano bellowed. “What a stupid [censored]. You just gave it to him. Gave a Toyota a stage win. Nice job. Way to go. What a [censored].”
The field comes to the green flag at Talladega. (Logan Riely/Getty Images)
(Logan Riely via Getty Images)
“That was all I could do not to wreck Joey,” Cindric protested, perhaps thinking of the Hamlin push that sent Bell into the wall. “I was obviously trying to stay there, I was trying not to wreck everybody.”
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Logano, Ty Gibbs and Chase Briscoe were among the lap leaders; Anthony Alfredo, driving for Beard Motorsports, even managed a few laps at the front of the pack.
As the laps wound down, a Chevy brigade of Byron, Larson and Alex Bowman challenged Ford’s Cindric for the lead. Cindric held the low line while Byron led the high line. Preece, a fellow Ford driver, slid high alongside Cindric for the final few laps, setting up the furious finish.
The Chevy contingent opted not to make a move into a third lane to catch Cindric and Preece, in part because of the lapped traffic right in front of the pack. That left Cindric and Preece free to duel one another for the victory, and Cindric came out on top.
