Joey Logano won his third straight Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway after a crazy and confusing finish under caution after a failed lone attempt at a green-white-checkered finish. On the final restart, Kevin Harvick (#4), who had been complaining of several issues since prior to the previous yellow, changed lanes on the track and turned the #6 Ford of Trevor Bayne, collecting Cole Whitt (#35), Denny Hamlin (#11) and several others. The resulting frozen field meant that the dominant #88 Chevrolet of Dale Earnhardt Jr. could not win, thus eliminating him from the Chase.
Earnhardt, leader of 63 of 188 scheduled laps around the 2.5-mile superspeedway, had taken his fast car from 27th place back to the lead after a lap 124 pit penalty, aided by a lap 133 caution caused by the sputtering #51 Chevrolet of Justin Allgaier, who already had misfortune during Saturday qualifying when his 2016 replacement Clint Bowyer backed his #15 Toyota into Allgaier's car on pit road. The first 132 laps had gone caution-free, and there were only two more cautions including the GWC attempt. Meanwhile, a promising day for young phenom Ryan Blaney went south when his #21 Ford lost its engine around lap 70. Prior to the lap 183 second caution, Greg Biffle attempted to stretch the fuel in his #16 Ford, leading by as much as 40 seconds over the Penske Fords of Logano and Brad Keselowski (#2). Just shy of the scheduled distance under caution, Biffle had to top off his tank, ceding the lead to Logano, with Earnhardt moving up to the outside lane of the front row. On the second attempt of the restart is when some say that Harvick intentionally turned Bayne to trigger the race-ending wreck, although there was ultimately no evidence that he did so on purpose.
The four Chasers eliminated after the race's finish was sorted out were Earnhardt, Hamlin, Ryan Newman (#31) and Matt Kenseth (#20). Hamlin and Newman made the Chanpionship Round at Homestead in 2014 with a combined one win between them, which was Hamlin's at the spring Talladega race. Earnhardt also got eliminated after Talladega last year after a late-race shuffle back to about 25th place, followed by a wreck. Kenseth, who started the Contender round on top of the Chase grid just like Jimmie Johnson (#48) in the Challenger round, got eliminated after trouble at Charlotte and Kansas. The Eliminator round begins Sunday, November 1 at the famous Martinsville, Virginia paperclip short track.
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