Aric Almirola earned his first victory of the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season on Sunday, winning at Talladega Superspeedway and guaranteeing himself a spot in the next round of NASCAR’s playoffs.
Almirola was part of a dominant performance by Stewart-Haas Racing, with team members winning every stage of the race and the overall title.
Almirola Grabs Lead in Overtime
SHR teammate Kurt Busch looked like he was set to pick up another win during a three-lap overtime sprint. But Busch lost fuel pressure with less than a lap to go in the race, allowing Almirola to move into the lead and win his first race in four years, only the second time he has collected the checkered flag in his NASCAR Cup Series career.
“I’ve been so close so many times this year,” Almirola said after the race. “Four or five times this year, I feel like we’ve had a shot to win, and I haven’t been able to seal the deal…I feel like I’ve let [the team] down so many times, because we’ve had so many opportunities to win and haven’t done it.”
The SHR team held all four of the top positions with three laps to go in the race. But Alex Bowman lost control of his car to cause a late caution, and set up the overtime finish. Several drivers, including Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, and Ryan Blaney, were forced to pit to have enough fuel to finish the overtime laps, scrambling the results as the field gathered for the restart.
Clint Bowyer finished in second place, .105 seconds behind his teammate.
NASCAR faced criticism from some drivers for a couple of late-race decisions. In particular, Kurt Busch expressed his displeasure at what he saw as inconsistent decisions to start and stop the race.
“There were two missed calls by NASCAR at the end,” Busch said afterwards. “Why do we have an extra yellow-flag lap [before the restart] is beyond me – the track was ready to go. At the end, once we crossed the white flag and there is a wreck and an ambulance needs to be dispatched, I’ve been on the other side of that where I was racing coming back to win the race and they said, ‘Well we had to dispatch an ambulance.’”
NASCAR responded to those comments, saying that they felt it was safe to end the race under a green flag, which is why they did so. Still, those decisions affected the results of several playoff drivers, including Busch, who finished in 14th place while running on fumes.
Results Muddle Playoff Picture
Almirola and Chase Elliott are now through to the Round of 8 thanks to their race wins in the second round of the playoffs, while Harvick and Kyle Busch still look good in third and fourth places ahead of Joey Logano, Kurt Busch, and Bowyer.
But it now seems likely that at least one of the favorites to reach the Championship 4 could fall out of contention before even the third playoff round. Martin Truex Jr. now sits on the cut line, 18 points of Keselowski, who was surging heading into the playoffs. One of the two could easily miss out on the cut after next week’s race at Kansas Speedway, especially if a lower-ranked playoff driver grabs an automatic berth with a win.
Truex was left to lament a rough race at Talladega, where he finished 23rd on a car he believed simply didn’t have what it needed on Sunday.
“I rode around all day broke, hanging on, miserable,” he said after his finish. “I couldn’t even race my car was so screwed up. I feel like the rear end house was falling out of it.”