The GEICO 500
The GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway debuted a new racing package and gave fans their favorite driver in Victory Lane. Chase Elliott wheeled his way to victory in his Little Caesar’s Chevrolet Camaro on Sunday, being pushed by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman. Elliott, driver of the #9, led 44 laps of the 188 total en route to victory. Chase, the son of Bill Elliott, survived the 2.66 mile racetrack without being involved in any serious accidents. The one-time winner of NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver award was very thankful for the fans after the win, saying thanks for helping him get there. This is Elliott’s first win of 2019 and fourth career Monster Energy Cup Series win of his career.
The Top 10
The top 10 drivers of the GEICO 500 showed a few surprises with a couple of drivers with great runs. Chevy (6), Ford (3), Toyota (1).
- Chase Elliott
- Alex Bowman
- Ryan Preece
- Joey Logano
- Daniel Hemric
- Kurt Busch
- Ryan Newman
- Brendan Gaughan
- Aric Almirola
- Kyle Busch
Accidents
Talladega is known for its huge crashes. “The Big One” is always lurking waiting to happen at any minute of the race. There were three large scale crashes that happened, knocking twelve drivers out of the race.
The first crash happened on lap 12 collecting six cars in its wake. Darrel Wallace Jr. had a run going into turn one and ran into the back of the #12 driven by Ryan Blaney. This upset the #43 car sending Wallace towards the outside wall collecting multiple cars. Second, Aric Almirola and Chris Buescher got together down the backstretch. Almirola in the #10 Ford Mustang bumped Buescher in the #37 too aggressively causing him to go around into the field collecting five cars in total.
Finally, the wreck that ended the race, giving Chase Elliott the victory, involved the typical last lap contact at any superspeedway. Drivers and their cars jockeying for position and forcing something that was not there, created a five-car accident with Kyle Larson flipping several times down the backstretch after a hard hit into the inside wall.
Takeaways from Talladega
Austin Dillon was the pole for the race in his Chevy Camaro and a Chevy won the race. Chevy looked strong in this race but it is a very aerodynamically dependent racetrack so some of the excitement might be short-lived as the Cup cars go back to the Monster Mile in Dover next week. But the eternal optimist in me says they could learn and get better from a positive performance anywhere so we will all just have to wait and see.
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