Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Scores Win in Electric Photo Finish at Talladega Superspeedway
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and superspeedways, they go together like peanut butter and jelly. On Sunday, Stenhouse pulled off his fourth NASCAR Cup Series race win (all have come on superspeedways) in an electric photo finish in the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
For Stenhouse, the race win makes what has been a trying season for the No. 47 team worth it. They found the light at the end of the tunnel.
"This team has put a lot of hard work in," Stenhouse said. "Obviously we haven't won since the 500 in '23. It's been an up-and-down season. It was a lot of hard work this season just trying to find a little bit of speed, but we knew that this track is one of ours to come get."
RELATED: NASCAR Cup Series YellaWood 500 Race Results
VIDEO: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Triumphs in Talladega Three-Wide Photo Finish
While he was the victor of the race, Stenhouse nearly didn't have the shot at even battling for the win as the JTG Daugherty Racing driver was one of 28 drivers involved in a massive melee on Lap 185. In the crash, which set the record for the largest version of 'The Big One' in Talladega Superspeedway history, Stenhouse took a direct shot to the driver's side door on his No. 47 machine in the carnage.
Stenhouse was fortunate that the shot he took merely peeled some of the bodywork off of his door. Had the shot been a few more feet forward or backward, he likely would have suffered a broken toe link, and potentially been turned into the wall. Either way, his bid for the win would have been snuffed out.
That didn't happen, and instead what happened was Stenhouse went to work at doing what he does better than most -- as he chased a victory at Talladega. However, Stenhouse admits that as the field was getting lined up behind him heading into the overtime finish, he had a full range of thoughts on how things would end up.
"...the caution came out, and I was a little bummed, but then when they started telling me the line-up behind me, I felt a lot more confident with all the Chevys that we had [lined up]," Stenhouse said.
So I was pumped to see Kyle [Larson] line up behind the 6, but he pushed him a lot harder than I was hoping he would push him. So, yeah, it was three-wide there at the end coming across the line. We've lost a couple here by inches, so it was cool to win one."
Utilizing shoves from Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron on the final lap, Stenhouse was able to get to the finish line ahead of Brad Keselowski by a thin margin of 0.006 seconds.
Stenhouse started the race from the 32nd starting spot, but wasted little time making his way to the front of the field as he competed for the Stage 1 win. His crew chief Mike Kelley says the team came into the weekend with a strategy of focusing on their race setup, and they refused to compromise on that plan.
"Well, today for us was just all about execution," Kelley said. "We generally don't qualify well here. I think today -- or yesterday was our best qualifying effort on a speedway with a Next Gen car. We qualified 32nd. We won't compromise our race setup, and we generally have a pretty good race car for Ricky to be able to maneuver around.
"A lot of ideas on strategy, and knowing these guys are racing for a championship and who is going to get stage points. We just kind of sat in our meeting on Thursday and said that we were going to try to win all the stage points, and we were going to try and win the race."
It all panned out.
Byron, a Playoff contender, would finish third. The good finish for Byron, coupled with a rough day for a large portion of the 12 contenders in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Byron was able to secure his advancement to the Round of 8 of the Playoffs by way of points.
Kyle Larson, Byron's teammate, would finish fourth, and Erik Jones would come home in fifth.
Christopher Bell, Justin Haley, Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace, and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-10 finishers in the event.
Ryan Blaney was swept up in a crash on Lap 119 as he was charging to the finish of Stage 2. A big shove from fellow Playoff contender Alex Bowman resulted in Blaney, the defending series champion, crashing into the outside wall.
Due to the crash, Blaney was relegated to a 39th-place finish in the 40-car field, which frustrated the Team Penske driver as it likely meant he would be leaving Talladega behind the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs cutline.
However, due to the Lap 185 Big One, five other Playoff contenders ended the day outside of the top-25. That saved Blaney's Playoff hopes, and the Team Penske driver heads into the final race of the Round of 12 25 points above the Playoffs cutline.
Next weekend's race will be contested at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, and at the end of that race the Playoff field will be whittled down to just eight drivers. The four drivers below the cutline heading into next weekend's Bank of America ROVAL 400 are Joey Logano (-13 points), Daniel Suarez (-20), Austin Cindric (-29), Chase Briscoe (-32).
The Bank of America ROVAL 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL is set for Sunday, October 13. That race will be televised on NBC beginning at 2 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.
This story is still being updated, as post-race press conference quotes become available, they will be added into the story.
Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.