Talladega Winners and Losers – NASCAR Talk | NBC Sports

Take a look at the winners and losers after Sunday’s Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway:

WINNERS

Ross Chestnut: Chastain’s journey from watermelon farmer to NASCAR racer got even sweeter on Sunday afternoon. Chastain watched the leaders ahead of him – Erik Jones and Kyle Larson – cross the tri-oval in a fight for victory, allowing the No. 1 Chevrolet to charge under with a push from Austin Dillon for his second career win. Chastain has two wins and six top-five finishes over the past eight races, the exceptions being a 19th-place finish at Richmond before an engine failure at Bristol Dirt. After recovering from a speeding penalty on Lap 36 that caught him a lap to the end of Stage 1, Chastain is now the second driver to claim multiple wins this season, joining William Byron , which won in Atlanta and Martinsville.

Austin Dillon: Dillon was quiet in Talladega but was in the right place when it mattered. As the leaders veered high, Dillon got stuck behind Chastain and pushed the No. 1 car to victory and scored second place. Dillon has finished in the top 10 in five races and has finished third or better three times.

Kyle Larson: In 31 previous superspeedway starts, Larson had scored no top fives and led 31 laps in total. On Sunday, Larson finished fourth and led 32 laps. The no. 5 Chevrolet was in position to make a move for the win entering the tri-oval, running second behind Jones but moved to the right with Kurt Busch’s Toyota still there, slowing Larson and sending Busch into the wall. Nonetheless, Larson walks away with a fourth-place finish for the second week in a row, his first streak of top-five finishes since an Auto Club victory and a second-place finish in Las Vegas.

Eric Jones: He may not have victory or even a top five to show for it, but Erik Jones exited the final corner of the race with a strong chance of standing in victory lane. The no. 43 Chevrolet blocked what became the wrong move, allowing Chastain to sneak in for the win. But Jones led 25 laps at Talladega, his most of the season and the most in a race since Darlington in May 2020, when Jones paced the pack for 27 laps in the No. 1.20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Michael McDowell: McDowell has two consecutive top-10 finishes. He finished eighth on Sunday, a week after finishing ninth on clay in Bristol. It’s the first time since the first three races of 2021 that McDowell, who won that year’s Daytona 500, has scored a consecutive top 10 finish. The no. The No. 34 team hasn’t gotten off to a good start this season with six finishes of 24th or less, but three top 10s and four top 15s show the team is still capable of producing strong performances.

LOSERS

Denny Hamlin: Even when Hamlin’s luck seems to turn for the better, it always seems to go wrong. Hamlin was racing in the top 10 heading into the final laps. But the No. The No. 11 team shorted Hamlin by a second of fuel, forcing Hamlin from sixth place with two laps to go. Hamlin still has only one top 10 in 10 races – his win at Richmond on April 3. He finished 18th on Sunday.

Brad Keselowski: Talladega looked like a key run for Keselowski to score meaningful points and a potential win as he defends from a 100-point penalty. Instead, the active leader in Talladega wins finished 23rd, trapped one lap after his second speeding penalty of the day. The no. 6 Ford remains 29th in driver points. He is 111 points outside the playoffs.

Tyler Red-Dick: Tyler Reddick was 0.33 seconds away at Bristol Dirt from entering Talladega with a win. Chase Briscoe’s much-discussed contact denied this, and it only got worse in Talladega. Reddick finished last – 39th – on Sunday after engine problems sent the No. 1.8 car to the garage on Lap 31. Sixteen races remain in the regular season and Reddick is one point in the playoff table.

Joey Logan: Logano is still a superspeedway victory contender, but the No. 22 Ford took a hard right into the wall after a lap 90 restart pile-up resulted in contact from Bubba Wallace. Logano bounced off the wall and into traffic in the middle of Turn 1, getting hammered by Ty Dillon and others en route to his first DNF of 2022, a 32nd-place finish. The 2018 series champion had finished second (Martinsville) and third (Bristol dirt) in the two races leading up to Talladega, but the No. 22 could not avoid calamity on Sunday.

Chase Briscoe: A week after knocking Reddick out of the win and finishing 22nd at Bristol, Briscoe took a vicious hit at Talladega when Daniel Hemric lost an engine, got kicked out at Turn 3 and came back through traffic in the nose of Briscoe’s car. A split second later, Briscoe was slammed down the right front by Chris Buescher, who had nowhere to go. Briscoe, who won in Phoenix in March, left with a 37th-place finish, capping a week to forget.