It’s time to go superspeedway racing again! That’s right! This weekend, the NASCAR tour roared into the Talladega Superspeedway for the Jack Link’s Jerky 500. Yesterday’s Xfinity Series race was a fairly clean and measured race. We were looking for more of the same today as the greatest drivers in the world, the heavy hitters of the NASCAR Cup Series, took to the longest oval track on the NASCAR schedule. We had several storylines heading into today’s race. Fords were fast. Hendrick Chevys seemed way off the pace. Would fuel saving put a damper on the racing product? Well, let’s break it down. Here are the 3 big takeaways from today’s Jack Link’s 500 from ‘Dega.
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The way pit stops cycled out (and Ross Chastain’s bone-headed block on Denny Hamlin to kill the Toyotas’ momentum), Austin Cindric was in prime position to win this race. A bulk of the credit goes to his pit crew who performed the fastest pit stop of the final green flag stops. One the lead was secured, the only viable challenger was Ryan Preece to the outside. Coming out of turn 4, it looked like Preece had a run. However, the lapped cars of Josh Berry and Kyle Busch ran to the inside, providing just enough of a draft for Cindric to latch onto and pull in forward at the line.
Today, Austin Cindric scored his third career win and locked himself into the 2025 NASCAR Playoffs.
After finally scoring a win last year as an owner-driver at Darlington, things have looked bleak for the co-owner of RFK Racing, Brad Keselowski. 2025 thus far has been a dismal season for the driver of the number 6 Ford as he currently sits 31st in points (prior to the finish of today’s race), 214 points back. At this point, Bad Brad has zero top 10 finishes and a best finish of 11th. His average finish is 26.3. Today, he was credited with a 38th place finish.
The downfall of Brad K. is something that perhaps ought to be studied. The issue that plagued him today occurred on Lap 43 as Keselowski and some of his Ford teammates were attempting to get onto pit road for green flag pit stops. What happened next was a typical chain reaction. Kyle Busch and Keselowski got together and spun. Keselowski turned down into Ryan Blaney, breaking the right rear toe link of his number 12 Advance Autoparts Ford. You can watch the incident below in a clip provided by FOX Sports. Though Kyle Busch was able to continue, this wreck ended the days of Blaney and Keselowski.
FOX Sports’ Josh Sims caught up with Brad after he was released from the in-field care center. “We were kinda the ham in the sandwich. Got squeezed,” driver of the number 6 Ford told Sims. You can check out his full post-crash interview below.
While their Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney was in the garage, done for the day, Joey Logano and Austin Cindric were racing for the stage 2 victory. They had the outside line running like a freight train. Logano led, Cindric was in second, and Josh Berry was pushing from third. As we got into the final laps of the stage, Logano went into defensive mode. Trying to block all lanes, the driver of the Shell 22 was separated from his teammates.
After blocking Bubba Wallace down low, the 3-time and defending series champion made a late block on Cindric. But by that point, Austin Cindric and Josh Berry had a head full of steam. The 2 was going to run over the 22 if he didn’t let off. So, Cindric let off which stacked him and Berry up as they fell to the bottom half of the top 10 to close the stage. This allowed Bubba to pass Logano down low. The 23XI flagship driver won the second stage and Logano had to settle for 4th.
Needless to say, Joey Logano was not happy with his teammate. He lit him up on the radio after the end of the stage. Check out what he said here.
As the laps wound down, we saw the pack start to cycle through what was likely to be their final green flag pit stops. Pitting first were the Toyotas and the Spire cars. Following their service, they got off pit road with no issue and formed a single-file line. Unfortunately, in that line they were running more-or-less the same lap times as the big pack. Meanwhile, the Fords and Chevys decided to run a little bit longer. Which group had the best strategy was up in the air. However, the FOX booth speculated that the early stops would pay off in a big way.
Next to pit, just inside 20 laps to go, were the Fords, save for leader Josh Berry and Austin Cindric. Then, the leaders and the Chevrolets came down. As it was shaping up, it looked as though the Toyota line was going to blow by the Chevys just as they had the Fords but Ross Chastain threw a block which stacked Hamlin up, killing their momentum. With that, the Chevys and Austin Cindric were able to secure the lead. Likely to be right there in the mix were Josh Berry and Kyle Busch. Unfortunately for them, they sped on pit road and were forced to serve pass-through penalties. This effectively ended their contention and set up the finish of the race.
Like yesterday’s race, the 2025 Jack Link’s 500 was relatively clean. The racing was good, hard, and aggressive, but somehow they were able to keep it straight and their noses clean. Nobody ran over anybody. It was just a good, clean race. What do you think, Daily Downforce readers? Did you enjoy today’s race? On a scale from 1 to 100, what would you rate it? How’d your favorite driver do? Are you happy for Austin Cindric? Let us know what you think!
That does it for us, race fans. Be sure to continue coming back here to DailyDownforce.com for all the latest NASCAR news and stories throughout the week. Next up: Texas Motor Speedway!
