Kyle Larson won at Talladega on Sunday, October 25, after falling to 11th with one lap left. The No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet beat teammate William Byron to the line by 0.041 seconds in an overtime finish at the YellaWood 500.
The win was the reigning Cup champion’s first on a superspeedway. It also came in the eighth race of NASCAR’s 10-race Chase, and it stretched his points lead to 73 with two races to go.
Behind him, Chevrolet filled every one of the top six places. For a driver whose drafting-track luck had been poor for years, the timing could hardly have been better.
How Kyle Larson won Talladega from 11th
The finish came down to the last half-lap. According to NASCAR’s official race recap, Larson dropped from the lead to 11th with a lap to go. He then moved to the bottom lane and passed seven cars in the final quarter-mile of overtime.
Help came from other Chevrolets. As NASCAR.com’s Zack Albert detailed, Austin Hill’s No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet had pushed Larson toward the front. Hill then dove low off Turn 2, which left Larson in the middle lane. Next, Ross Chastain’s No. 1 Trackhouse Racing car gave Larson a drafting push, and the No. 5 surged ahead along the bottom.
Larson was frank about it afterward. “I got really lucky with kinda how everything worked out there,” he said, according to NASCAR’s recap. Byron, meanwhile, took second with mixed feelings. “Man, second sucks but it’s good that Kyle won,” he said.
A superspeedway drought ends
Before this, Talladega had rarely been kind to Kyle Larson. In fact, NASCAR.com notes that he entered the weekend 0-for-23 at the Alabama track. The win also ended a stretch of 58 races on drafting tracks without a victory, so it came in his 59th try.
He started 10th, according to NASCAR’s official results. Along the way, he led four times for 23 laps, but he took the lead for good only on the final lap. As a result, he scored 71 points on the day, the most in the field.
For Larson, the timing matters more than the venue. He is a two-time Cup champion and the series’ reigning title holder. With this result, his third win of the season, he heads into the last two races in control of the Chase.
Chevrolet sweeps the top six
In short, the finishing order reads like a Chevrolet press release. Behind Larson and Byron came Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the No. 47 Hyak Motorsports car and Chastain in fourth. Then Cole Custer brought the No. 41 Haas Factory Team entry home fifth, and Carson Hocevar finished sixth in the No. 77 for Spire Motorsports.
According to Chevrolet’s official race release, the brand placed eight cars in the top 10, its best total of the season. Five different Chevrolet teams finished in that top 10. The release also puts Chevrolet at eight Cup wins after 34 races this year.
Further back, Todd Gilliland finished seventh, and Denny Hamlin, Larson’s closest pursuer in the standings, came home eighth. Alex Bowman and Michael McDowell rounded out the top 10.
How the race unfolded
The YellaWood 500 was busy long before the last lap. As Racing America’s official results report shows, the lead changed 41 times among 15 drivers. Chris Buescher led the most laps, 53, and won the first stage. Joey Logano then won the second stage.
Several Chase drivers had a hard afternoon. For example, pole winner Chase Briscoe finished 33rd, and Christopher Bell finished 35th after a spin on pit road. A multi-car crash on the final restart of regulation brought out a red flag and set up the overtime finish. After post-race inspection, NASCAR confirmed him as the official winner.
The race took 3 hours, 7 minutes and 54 seconds, at an average speed of 160.534 mph.
Where the Chase stands with two races left
As a result, the points picture shifted sharply. After Talladega, Larson leads Hamlin by 73 points, and Bell sits 74 back. Logano is fifth, 100 points behind, while Ryan Blaney is sixth at 107 back, according to NASCAR’s recap.
Now two races remain. First, the Cup Series heads to Martinsville Speedway for the Xfinity 500 on Sunday, November 1, at 2 p.m. ET on NBC. Then the season ends at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Hendrick Motorsports, Larson’s team, holds a record 31 Cup wins at Martinsville, according to NASCAR.com.
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