Kyle Busch won NASCAR’s GEICO 500 at Talladega on Sunday, after a last lap caution was thrown when Bubba Wallace got spun while trying to block Ryan Blaney for the lead in Turn 2.
This finish was set up by a wreck on the previous restart, which itself was set up by an accident a few laps earlier. Both of the final two restarts were “overtime” attempts in which the race ran past its scheduled distance.
In the wreck on the penultimate restart, Kyle Larson was viciously hit in the passenger door by Ryan Preece. A.J. Allmendinger then took a heavy impact into Martin Truex, Jr. during the crash that ended the race.
Torn up sheet metal was the theme of the weekend, as it tends to be at Talladega, NASCAR’s biggest and fastest superspeedway. During Saturday’s Xfinity race, both Blaine Perkins and Daniel Hemric went upside
down during separate accidents.
Perkins was hospitalized after his crash, but it is believed that this is mostly precautionary. He did climb out of his car under his own power.
In the main event, it was perhaps fitting that Busch, who led late in the Daytona 500 before late-race chaos ensued, ended up on the right end of this one. Busch hadn’t won on a drafting track (Daytona, Talladega, and the newly redesigned Atlanta) since 2008, despite having 62 career Cup Series wins overall.
Every race fan knows that superspeedway racing is a game of survival until the end, and then all bets are off. It provides an entertaining, action-packed product, but there is always the threat of high-danger situations, as we saw this weekend.
Thankfully, all drivers appear to have escaped any serious injuries.
