Maiden NASCAR Cup Series victory for Ricky Stenhouse Jr

Ricky Stenhouse Jr finally did it! The 2013 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the year needed more than four full seasons and 158 starts in the American premier stock car competition to capture his maiden win. And he does that on the greatest track of all, at Talladega Superspeedway. He makes in a style, starting from pole at Geico 500 and taking a win after 191 laps, Between green and checkered flag, he led for fourteen laps. Ricky’s victory is also the first for Roush Fenway Racing since Carl Edwards’s triumph at Sonoma in June 2014.

Stehnouse crossed the finish line with 0.095 seconds gap over Jamie McMurray in an overtime after a restart caused by Ryan Newman’s late wreck. Kyle Busch, who led a race-high 48 laps, finished in the third place.

The Big One at Talladega

As usual at Talladega, the race was marked by the “Big One” on Lap 169, which damaged 18 of the 38 cars still running at the time. After a tap from the #47 Chevrolet of AJ Allmendinger, the #24 Chevy of Chase Elliott turned sideways across traffic on the backstretch. The nose of Allmendinger’s car launched Elliott’s into the air, and his car landed on the hood of Joey Logano’s Ford.

Among the contending cars also damaged in the wreck were those of Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr., Matt Kenseth, Trevor Bayne and Erik Jones. After an almost half an hour stoppage to clean up the wreckage, the arce started again.