There were many winners and losers from the weekend of racing at Michigan International Speedway.
CHECKERED FLAGS
Ryan Blaney
Where did he come from? Blaney hovered near the front of the field Sunday but put himself in position late in the FireKeepers Casino 400 to win his second NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2021 season.
William Byron
Byron was in the hunt for his second victory of the season but came up just short. He did score the first top-five finish for Hendrick Motorsports at Michigan since Chase Elliott finished second there in June of 2017.
Kyle Larson
It’s never a surprise these days when Larson is in the mix for a win and that was again the case Sunday at Michigan. The day didn’t end with victory number six of the year, but Larson’s third-place performance maintained his streak of finishing top-three in 10 of the last 14 races of 2021. He also led the most laps at 70.
Matt DiBenedetto
Desperately trying to make the playoffs, DiBenedetto had a strong outing in Michigan. His seventh top-10 finish of 2021 happened on Sunday, which was his fourth in the last six races.
AJ Allmendinger
What do you do to follow up a Cup Series win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway the week before? You go out and win in the Xfinity Series six days later at Michigan.
BLACK FLAGS
Austin Dillon
Contact from Brad Keselowski after the duo had passed the start-finish line at the end of Stage 2 sent Dillon into the wall with a hard crash and out of the race. He’ll most likely need to win Saturday night in Daytona to make the playoffs.
Joey Logano
He got caught up in a chain-reaction accident on a late restart first making contact with Tyler Reddick and then getting hit from behind by Martin Truex Jr. that sent Logano spinning, crashing and then out of the race.
Josh Berry
He had a good run in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race filling in for Michael Annett and then the super sub jumped in for Corey LaJoie in Sunday’s Cup race. But it was not meant to be as Berry was involved in the same wreck that took out Logano.
Austin Cindric
Had a big accident in Saturday’s Xfinity Series that was compounded when his battered race car dropped oil all around the track.
Daniel Hemric
The poster child for bad luck had another unfortunate outing Saturday as Hemric was credited with a 39th-place finish.
