Winners and losers from a wild and historic weekend of racing at Talladega Superspeedway.
CHECKERED FLAGS
Bubba Wallace
Scored his first career NASCAR Cup Series win in Monday’s rain-shortened YellaWood 500. Wallace gave the new 23X1 Racing organization its first win and in doing so became the first Black driver since Wendell Scott in 1963 to win in NASCAR’s top division.
Brad Keselowski
Stayed right in the playoff hunt with his second-place finish and scored his seventh top-two Talladega finish, including both races in 2021.
Anthony Alfredo
The Front Row Motorsports driver was able to stay in the lead pack and it paid off with his first career Cup Series top-10 performance.
Tate Fogleman
A first career Camping World Truck Series victory for Fogleman who won Saturday’s rough-and-tumble Chevy Silverado 250.
Brandon Brown
A very popular winner of Saturday’s Xfinity Series Sparks 300. Brown and his small, family-owned race team have hung in there with the big organizations this year and it paid off with their first trip to Victory Lane.
BLACK FLAGS
Hendrick Motorsports
Three of Rick Hendrick’s drivers were knocked out of the YellaWood 500 after getting swept up in accidents including Kyle Larson, William Byron and Alex Bowman. The latter two are in a dire situation to remain alive in the playoff race with one race remaining in the second round.
Tyler Reddick
The Richard Childress Racing driver finished fifth in the opening stage and had the look of someone trying to play spoiler in the Playoff picture. Unfortunately, he got swept up in an incident and finished 39th.
Matt DiBenedetto
The beleaguered DiBenedetto continues to struggle with bad luck in his waning days with the Wood Brothers. He was yet another innocent bystander who was eliminated in a crash on Monday.
Truck Race
The story of Tate Fogleman winning was great. But a very rough and aggressive race had several drivers questioning others about going over the line and not showing respect, a trend that only gets magnified during the playoff portion of the schedule.
Mother Nature
Not much more to say than hopefully she’ll take the rest of the season off after forcing Sunday’s Cup race to get punted to Monday afternoon.
