Talladega takeaways: NASCAR championship within reach for Kyle Larson

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The YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway ended in the way everyone thought it would: With unpredictable chaos.

A big wreck with five laps to go forced overtime, and on the final lap, Kyle Larson went from leading to 11th, to winning. Larson took the checkered flag for the third time in NASCAR's postseason Chase and padded his points lead.

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Elsewhere in the race, NASCAR's advancements in safety were on full display as drivers miraculously walked away from brutal wrecks. And in Stage 1, a trio of drivers opted for a different strategy than the rest of the field and saw it pay off.

Here are takeaways from a wild day at 'Dega on Sunday, Oct. 25:

Kyle Larson leaves Talladega with the championship within reach

Despite how good he's been in the Chase, few people expected Kyle Larson to win at Talladega. After all, he hasn't been very good on superspeedways in his Cup Series career, with a combined record of 0-for-48 at Talladega and Daytona entering Sunday.

But in the overtime finish, Larson was surrounded by fellow Chevrolets. Austin Hill was pushing him into the lead entering the first turn of the final lap, but Larson got loose and Hill slipped past him. It looked like the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports wasn't going to win on the backstretch as he faded to 11th place in the pack, but then he got a shove from Ross Chastain, found some momentum, got a run and dipped low to zoom by the field.

Larson wound up winning, beating teammate William Byron and fellow Chevrolet driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in a photo finish, capturing victory by four-hundredths of a second.

For Larson, the result was huge, considering he entered the race with just a five-point advantage atop the leaderboard and left up 73 points. That was in part due to other contenders having disastrous days. Christopher Bell damaged his car in Stage 1 and finished 12 laps down, while Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick, Chase Briscoe and Joey Logano all got caught up in wrecks. Denny Hamlin suffered some damage to his car too, but salvaged an eighth-place finish.

"They've done a lot of things right. A lot of things have gone right," Hamlin said of Larson's team. "We've not done that. We've got a big 'ol gap. I think as long as (Larson) can keep his four tires on it the next two weeks, he'll be champion again."

The Cup Series moves from pack racing at Talladega to short-track racing at Martinsville Speedway next weekend. If Larson leaves Martinsville ahead by 77 points, he will have captured his third championship with one race remaining. In Larson's last eight races at Martinsville, he's finished no worse than ninth.

"The points can swing a lot. To me the confidence factor just comes from our team. I know the work that we're going to put in. You just never know what's going to lie ahead," Larson's crew chief Cliff Daniels said. "We have to make sure we're still playing offense well. There's still stage points to go get, hopefully a good finish to go get."

NASCAR's advances in safety on full display in Joey Logano's wreck

In one of the worst wrecks NASCAR has seen this season, Joey Logano got turned and went airborne with five laps to go. His No. 22 Ford landed roof-down on the track and slid several yards.

It took a few minutes, but after NASCAR crews flipped Logano's car over, the veteran three-time champion got out of his vehicle under his own power and was quickly cleared by the infield care center.

“It was a very much a 'Talladega Nights' moment like, ‘Oh, no. I’m upside down. This is not good moment.’ But I can’t thank the safety crew enough," Logano said. "They did an amazing job flipping that thing over. The car did a great job. The last time I flipped it was crushed on my head. This time, I don’t think anything really caved or crushed at all. I appreciate what NASCAR has done."

Meanwhile, while Logano was flipping, Riley Herbst bounced off the outside wall and went nose-first into the SAFER barrier of the inside wall. He had to be helped out of his No. 35 Toyota. Still, Herbst left the infield care center with just his left wrist wrapped up and was able to do an interview while sipping an energy drink.

The wreck, and the fact that all drivers were able to walk away from it fairly cleanly, are an example of the safety advancements NASCAR has made in recent years. Following the mandated use of the HANS device and the implementation of SAFER barriers at all tracks following the death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001 at Daytona, no driver has died from an on-track incident in any of the top three national touring series of the sport.

NASCAR continues to innovate in safety. For example, they're able to take data from mouthpieces that drivers use to measure G-forces on hits and bumps on the track, which is later used to determine if improvements or changes to a track are necessary.

Did RFK figure something out at superspeedways?

For years with the Next Gen car, much of early-stage racing has been done in two-by-two packs with drivers not running at full throttle in an effort to save fuel. Simply put, it makes for boring racing until the stakes ramp up at the end of stages.

On Sunday at Talladega, the three cars for Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing decided it was time to try a new strategy. Around the middle of Stage 1, Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece and Chris Buescher pulled out of the pack and created a new three-car line, running wide-open. The rest of the field ran three-wide at about 32% throttle.

And so, Keselowski, Preece and Buescher zoomed past the field and to the lead, then placed first, second and third at the end of the opening stage by a comfortable margin from the rest of the pack – crossing the start-finish line about 18 seconds ahead of everyone else.

After the race, Preece said the three teams decided to pull out and run full throttle "about a lap before we did it."

"I've been waiting for someone to pull the strategy that (RFK) did and made it work pretty good," said Jeff Gordon, the NASCAR Hall of Famer and vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. "

While the strategy didn't pay off quite as well in the second and third stages – as Buescher and Keselowski got caught up in late-race wrecks – the RFK pack turned heads. Could this be the beginning to the end of fuel-saving at superspeedways?

“The key to racing is always being the first one, whether that be in the shop, on the track, strategy, whatever it may be you find the advantage before everybody else," Preece said. "I’m pumped that (the crew chiefs) did that because I’m a racer. I want people to push the crap out of things to be the first one because then we all benefit from it, so hopefully that sets the tone for the off-season and everything we’re gonna work on towards next year.

"That will never happen again. You'll see every team in this garage react and will not allow that to happen ever again. That was pretty neat."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Talladega takeaways: NASCAR championship within reach for Kyle Larson

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