Denny Hamlin's team should have left Talladega ecstatic. The Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver went from hovering near the NASCAR Cup Series playoff bubble to 30 points above it with one race remaining until the Round of 8.
But Hamlin didn't get a points cushion by driving through the field. He got there because the entire field drove into itself.
"With this racing, the way it is now, you've got to get lucky at the right times," Hamlin's crew chief Chris Gabehart said. "And we got lucky for once."
Hamlin's story is a classic example of how Talladega racing has turned into the equivalent of Russian Roulette. As the laps wound down in Sunday's YellaWood 500, the No. 11 Toyota appeared down for the count, limping around the track with hood damage suffered after Ryan Blaney's Ford spun directly in front of him at the end of the second stage.
"We just figured the best option was to race and not fix it," Hamlin explained. "Just, you know, I didn't have the speed after that wreck I needed to contend."
With four laps remaining, Hamlin found himself outside the top 30, losing contact with the lead draft and potentially his championship hopes. But after a hard day of racing at 'Dega, the pack superglued together in three, sometimes four-abreast formation, all it took was one bad bump inside that draft for things to go horribly wrong.
On the backstretch, Brad Keselowski did just that, mistiming a bump with Austin Cindric's rear bumper. Within seconds, the No. 2 Ford was sideways in a wreck that involved over half the field along with him.
Cindric went from stage two winner, moments from punching a ticket into the Round of 8 to being punched around the track like a pinball at 190 miles per hour.
"I don't really feel like doing a whole lot of complaining about what happened or whose fault it is," Cindric said after ending the day 32nd, now sitting 11th in the 12-driver playoff field. "It doesn't really matter."
In the end, other competitors did the talking for him.
"I didn't even have fun today," Logano said. "You can't even do anything here. You just get stuck. You're running four-wide and it looks cool, but you're running half-throttle and then when you want to go and it's time to go, everyone is just stuck two-wide, so there's not many moves you can make."
"Obviously," fourth-place finisher Kyle Larson said, "There's a lot of luck that plays into just finishing these races."
Larson should know. The 2021 Cup champ and 28-race winner has a grand total of two top-five finishes in these pack races at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta.
What made the difference this time? Larson was fourth at the time of this incident, far enough ahead to see the rest of the pack wreck behind him.
"You need to come out in that top five to protect yourself from this," added Michael McDowell, another casualty. "You want to be somewhere to avoid it and we just weren't."
In the end, the carnage benefitted people like Hamlin, who charged up to an unlikely top-10 finish and created distance over his championship competitors. Larson and Christopher Bell all but clinched their positions in the next round while William Byron officially did so.
On the other end of the spectrum? Drivers like Cindric, Chase Briscoe and Logano all saw superior cars turned into scrap metal at the drop of a hat. Now, they enter Charlotte next weekend in desperation mode to advance.
"It felt like there at the end, we were in position," Briscoe said, "And then I don't know what happened."
Gabehart sure feels like he knows: Lady Luck, track position and not much else.
"Gen-7 speedway racing, I just don't see any greatness," he explained. "There's qualifying up front, there's a little bit of a tussle after an event… a green flag comes out, or a pit cycle completes… but once they all get lined up, you're just stuck. There's no more driver ability, no more driver talent to speak of."
Traffic Report
Green: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Oh yeah, there was a winner after the late-race mess that involved up to 28 cars in the field. Stenhouse took his single-car JTG Daugherty Racing team to their first victory since the 2023 Daytona 500. It was just his third top-five finish of the year and first since Iowa in June, an uplifting moment in an otherwise disappointing year.
Yellow: Brad Keselowski. Keselowski wound up runner-up at 'Dega, his best performance since Charlotte Memorial Day weekend. He might even have been the winner if a Ford, not the Chevy of Kyle Larson, was pushing the No. 6 car on the final lap.
However, Keselowski is here because his bump of Cindric decimated the field. It could have been anyone, but the truth is that moment completely changed the outcome of the race.
Red: Michael McDowell. McDowell has a series-high six poles this season after starting his career a whopping 0-for-460. Problem is, that speed doesn't carry over to race day: he hasn't earned a single top-five finish in any of those races and piled up three DNFs, including Sunday's 37th-place result after getting caught up in the melee.
Speeding Ticket: NASCAR's Damaged Vehicle Policy. Josh Berry was one of several drivers upset with officials after his car, still capable of running to the finish, was deemed out of the race because it couldn't be pushed to pit road on four flat tires. This rant made clear what other drivers were feeling: the policy is enforced inconsistently with a Gen-7 car that's tough to tow. We'll see if some sort of rule change happens in 2025.
Oops!
The most frustration from any wreck actually didn't occur in the Big One. Instead, it was Ryan Blaney spouting off after the No. 12 car was turned hard by Alex Bowman as the pack came around to complete the end of Stage 2.
The incident left the reigning champ frustrated, the fourth time in the last seven races he's failed to finish due to a crash.
"The 48 just drove straight through me in the tri-oval," Blaney explained after exiting his car. "He just wrecked the shit out of me. I don't know what he's thinking."
Bowman, for his part, took responsibility after soldiering on to finish 16th.
"Disappointed in myself for crashing the 12," Bowman said. Just need to make better decisions and do a better job."