The YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway was a relatively clean race up until the end of Stage 2, when Alex Bowman pushed Ryan Blaney a little too hard coming to the line, turning him around and sending him into Ross Chastain , ruining both of their afternoons.
On the latest episode of The Teardown , Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi examined what exactly when down between the No. 48, the No. 12 and the No. 1, as the NASCAR insiders tried to make sense of the entire wreck following the race.
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“The first incident, big incident, happens right at the checkered flag of Stage 2,” Gluck prefaced . “Blaney’s involved, Chastain’s involved. Bowman started it. [Joey] Logano got some damage. So, obviously Blaney not happy with Bowman. … I think Bowman took responsibility for that. You think, ‘Oh, this doesn’t look good for Blaney,’ but fortunately for him, later like, the entire field wrecks. Blaney ends up leaving +25. So, it could’ve been a disastrous day, finishing P39.
“This was sort of the classic situation where Talladega giveth and Talldega taketh away, because this was the place where Blaney’s playoff run really got into high gear last year. He won this race, and then he goes on to win the championship, and everybody pointed to this moment as like, you know, the thing that gave him some momentum.
“This time, it threatened to pull all of his momentum away, but when everybody else crashes, he’s actually going to the Roval not in terrible shape at all.”
Continuing, Bianchi also looked at it from Blaney’s point of view, believing the reigning Cup Series champion ended up leaving Talladega in a much better spot than he thought he was going to when he originally wrecked.
“He’s in a spot where, as long as he has a decent day, nothing happens, he should move on,” Bianchi added , regarding Blaney’s chances of moving on to the Round of 8 at the Roval. “The nice thing is he’s got Tyler Reddick and Chase Elliott behind him too, so a nice little buffer with those guys. A bad, horrible day could’ve turned out a lot worse.
“At the end of the day, he leaves here — he would’ve been in a spot to probably clinch, because he’s been in a very good points position, but this could’ve been much worse than it was.”
Alas, Alex Bowman might’ve ended Ryan Blaney and Ross Chastain’s afternoons at Talladega, but the No. 12 is at least in a solid spot moving forward, after almost the entire field wrecked later in the race. We’ll see if the trio of drivers can bounce back at the Roval, as the Cup Series will move to Charlotte this weekend.
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