Mother Nature did not want to cooperate on Sunday, so the GEICO 500 was postponed to Monday afternoon. After 188 laps and NASCAR overtime, Ryan Blaney was victorious for his first time of the season at the Talladega Superspeedway.
NASCAR allowed fans at the track for the second week in a row; Monday there were 5,000 fans compared to the 1,000 that attended Homestead-Miami Speedway.
When asked by FOX what was going through his head on the final lap, Blaney said, “I just tried to block the best we could. Block the top, block the bottom. The 20 [Erik Jones] got up to my outside and I went up there to slow him down.”
He continued by saying, “Really proud of this Menards, Sylvania team. It’s been a cool year so far, really excited to get our first win of the year at such a cool place. Thank you to everyone coming. I appreciate it and I’m sticking around; that was a lot of fun.”
Martin Truex Jr. led the field to green, and the race stayed green until lap 25 when NASCAR threw the competition caution. When things on track were heating up, rain moved from the southwest and over top of Talladega Superspeedway, leading to a red flag. When the race resumed, it was Tyler Reddick who went on to win Stage One under caution.
Stage One:
- Tyler Reddick
- Alex Bowman
- Joey Logano
- Jimmie Johnson
- Kyle Busch
- Ryan Blaney
- Brad Keselowski
- Kurt Busch
- Chase Elliott
- William Byron
As green flag pit stops were approaching, John Hunter Nemechek spun on the frontstretch, bringing out the third caution of the race on lap 94. Debris on the backstretch brought out the yellow flag with six to go in the second stage. That caution set up for a two lap shootout for the stage win that Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was able to capture.
Stage Two:
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Ryan Blaney
- Kyle Busch
- Brad Keselowski
- Christopher Bell
- Joey Logano
- Bubba Wallace
- Cole Custer
- Chris Buescher
- William Byron
The sixth caution came out on lap 133 when Chase Elliott spun around and collected Austin Dillon. Lap 141 brought trouble to Brennan Poole when he got loose and collected Joey Gase.
With three laps to go Jimmie Johnson made contact with Kevin Harvick, causing Johnson to spin while entering turn one; this set up for the first attempt of NASCAR overtime.
Chaos ensued as they crossed the start/finish line as Ryan Blaney held off a charging Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Rounding out the top-five was Aric Almirola, Denny Hamlin and Erik Jones.
Next weekend the NASCAR Cup Series travels to Pennsylvania to take on Pocono Raceway in a doubleheader weekend. Tune into FOX on Saturday, June 27th at 3:30pm EST for the Pocono Organics 325 and Fox Sports 1 on Sunday, June 28th at 4:00pm EST for the Pocono 350!
