For a moment, it looked as if Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Hyak Motorsports were about to spoil the Chase contenders’ day in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Talladega.
Stenhouse took the lead as Kyle Larson got shuffled out of line by Austin Hill on the white flag lap, and then opened a gap as those behind him made contact. At the exit of Turn 4, he had Hill directly behind him, but the power cut out on the No. 33 RCR Chevrolet and suddenly, Stenhouse was a sitting duck.
He darted high to block William Byron’s run, but the No. 24 still cut to his inside. But either way, his focus was on the wrong Hendrick car as Larson came roaring up the inside with Ross Chastain pushing him.
Larson won the race, 0.041s ahead of Byron and 0.066s ahead of Stenhouse.
Kyle Larson wins, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Photo by: Sean Gardner / Getty Images
“I did everything that I felt like I needed to do. I just never saw the No. 5 [Larson] coming,” said Stenhouse as he thought back on the finish. “I was focused on the No. 24 [Byron], and by the time I realized the No. 5 was coming from five or six positions back, I just wasn’t able to get down and block him. It was an awesome day for our No. 47 NOS Energy Chevrolet team. They worked really hard. The strategy got us in a really good position to lead the race and control the race a lot during that final stage, so I was really happy about that. Just one wrong move there at the end, trying to block the No. 24, we gave the race to the No. 5.”
Stenhouse has four Cup wins — all at superspeedways. His most recent victory came in this very fall race at Talladega, two years ago. He still ended the day as the top-finishing non-Chase driver, narrowly beating Ross Chastain for that accolade.
This was also Stenhouse’s fourth top five of the year, which is pretty impressive for a single-car team. He hasn’t had a season with that many top fives since 2017 when he drove for Roush.
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