Talladega likes to bring the heat. But along with the high, hard one, there’s an occasional curveball.
Such as Sunday’s relatively clean Jack Link’s 500, which went without a Big One, even on a crowded final lap with some drivers quite hungry for a win. Just two wreck-fueled cautions, both early, one with five cars and the other three, and just 12 total laps under yellow.
After-school pickup lanes are more aggressive.
You rarely lose by taking the “under” on Talladega’s over/under on caution laps.
And remember, this came just six months after last October’s playoff race at Talladega when, three laps from the end, a backstretch calamity included 23 cars.
So, it can be done. On rare occasions. It’s quite telling when we talk about a track producing so few accidents.
Much of the ugliness took place well after the checkers, back in the bowels of the garage. More about that in a bit, along with a record-book update involving Dale Earnhardt (EARNHARDT!) and a weather report from America’s Crossroads.
Let’s go through the gears.
First Gear: Austin Cindric often contends but rarely wins
Cindric’s win is good for him, of course, and welcome news for those who like to see the underdogs win now and then. But you have to wonder.
Is Cindric really an underdog on the superspeedways? He’s almost always in the mix. He’s led laps in the past seven races at Daytona/Talladega, but before Sunday, he’d had just two top-10s in his nine previous superspeedway starts — six of his finishes were between 22nd and 37th.
Why rehash all that? Just to remind everyone, for the umpteenth time, there’s a whole lot more that can go wrong than right in an automobile race.
That explains Cindric’s unbridled excitement when he uncorked himself from the cockpit after the checkers and damn near ran through Fox’s Regan Smith in the tri-oval. At Daytona/Talladega, as well as modern Atlanta, you can go from 18th to third in a lap, which means the opposite is also true.
Oddly enough, Cindric is also a really good road-course racer, but lo and behold, he never seriously contends at them. He sure did in Xfinity — five of his 13 wins were on roadies.
If he can get the road mojo back, going along with his superspeedway acumen, you’re looking at a third of the schedule that slides into his favor.
Second Gear: This ain’t the Dairy Queen type of DQ
Just when we were feeling good for Ryan Preece, who’s been seeing some positive signs this season at RFK Racing after several seasons of racing for 18th or 20th. Sure, it was Talladega, where such things can happen for nearly any driver, but a runner-up finish was still reason for celebration.
Right up until the Boys in Tech got all nosy. Back there at the spoiler, a spot that should be occupied by two shims, three were present. And three’s a crowd for that tech bunch.
DQ, and a finish of 38th instead of second.
But misery loves company, and Joey Logano’s Penske team provided it. Again, it’s the spoiler, except we’re talking bolts, not shims. And man, talk about technicalities.
The spoiler is attached to the car with 18 bolts. NASCAR said one of those 18 bolts was missing. Just one, but rules are rules, say the rulemakers.
Except the Penske team’s statement said the bolt was loose, not missing. There’s a subtle difference between having a loose screw and a screw that’s completely absent — on and off the track.
So Joey’s season of misery continues. His fifth at Talladega was just his second top-10 of 2025, right up until it wasn’t.
Third Gear: Dale Earnhardt, Tony Stewart left behind
Bet you never expected to discover that Dale Earnhardt and Tony Stewart had been left in the dust by none other than Austin Hill.
That’s right, Austin Hill just pulled ahead of the Intimidator and Smoke.
But you might want to reach into the tool box and find your package of asterisks. Oh, and maybe a party hat, since today is Earnhardt’s birthday — he would’ve been 74 today.
With his photo-finish, at-the-yellow Talladega win, Hill now has nine career Xfinity Series wins at the “plate tracks,” a record he shared — at eight — with Earnhardt and Stewart.
But keep in mind, Hill has three of those tracks available — Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta — while the two Hall of Famers had just Daytona and Talladega during their old Busch Series forays. And Hill has really capitalized on Atlanta becoming a plate track in 2022: He’s won five times in seven starts.
His other Xfinity wins, all since 2022, have come at Vegas, Homestead, Pocono and Martinsville, so he’s not just a plate-race jockey.
Seems like a good time to point out how overall productive Hill has been the past seven-plus seasons. He’s won in ARCA, then Trucks, now Xfinity. At 30, it might be past time for an honest shot in a Cup car for the North Georgia native.
Fourh Gear: Kyle Larson tests the fence at Indy
Here’s one way of looking at it.
“All right, here we go. We’ll see if it feels way worse than hitting the wall in NASCAR.”
That’s what Kyle Larson recalled telling himself in the fraction of a second he had between losing his Indy-car and broadsiding the outside SAFER Barrier between Turns 1 and 2 at Indianapolis last week.
It was Day 2 of a two-day Brickyard test for Larson and all others pointing toward late-May’s Indy 500. There will be more Indy work for Larson, primarily in a simulator to help him get comfy with the dashboard wizardry in those cars.
Let’s point out the obvious: This seems like a lot of lifting for a highly funded effort that’ll be entirely weather-dependent. There will be no skipping the second half of the famed double — the Coke 600 in Charlotte — if rain delays the Indy start as it did last year.
NASCAR’s new “Kyle Rule” still includes a possible playoff waiver for a driver who misses a race for something other than medical reasons, but that driver will lose all current and future playoff points, which greatly increases the degree of difficulty in the postseason.
Meanwhile, let’s see what the Old Farmer’s Almanac says about the Month of May in Indy and the rest of the Ohio River Valley: “Temperatures and rainfall above normal.”
Sorry I asked.
— Email Ken Willis at [email protected]
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