With a photo finish and a crash-filled race, Austin Cindric claimed victory at the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
In a race where accidents played a major role in the outcome, Austin Cindric, from Team Penske, won the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. With a photo finish, Cindric secured his third career win in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Key crashes during the race
During Stage 1 of the race, two accidents occurred that eliminated clear contenders for the victory at Talladega. The first came on lap 43, when at the pit entry zone there was contact between Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski, which also ended up impacting Ryan Blaney; because of this, both Keselowski and Blaney had to abandon the race due to the damage to their cars.
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The next incident came on lap 52, when at that moment Christopher Bell and Chris Buescher were leading the race as first and second respectively. Bell suffered a very slight rear contact from Denny Hamlin, causing Bell to lose control of his car and go straight into Buescher, who was running on the inside lane, and both ultimately crashed into a protective wall due to the momentum, leaving them out of the competition.
A very close finish
For the race’s conclusion, Cindric took the lead, but with only thousandths of a second separating him from second place, giving us a final lap where there was a battle between the #2 car and Ryan Preece in the #60 car, with the two drivers exchanging the lead at every turn until reaching the finish line, where Cindric edged ahead by 0.022 seconds to win the race.
Cover photo: X (@NASCAR)
