By Aaron Bearden

A breakdown of Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, the 10th race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Main Takeaway

For the first time as a Cup Series team owner, NBA legend Michael Jordan was on-site for one of 23XI Racing’s wins. 

In fitting fashion for a man nicknamed ‘His Airness,’ the win came at a drafting-focused superspeedway. 

Jordan watched on with everyone else as a chaotic final lap opened the door for Tyler Reddick to bring the No. 45 team to victory lane at Talladega. Reddick pulled off the NASCAR equivalent of a shocking buzzer beater, dodging a crashing Michael McDowell in the trivial and shooting past the slowed Brad Keselowski to steal his first win of the season. 

The victory was 23XI Racing’s sixth and second at Talladega, coming three seasons after its 2021 breakthrough at the track with Bubba Wallace. 

But this one was special. Reddick won with Jordan in attendance, sporting one of his special Jordan-branded liveries. The Basketball Hall of Famer picked up Reddick’s son, Beau, while Reddick himself climbed up the Talladega catch fence in celebration. 

“Denny keeps saying I was bad luck when I come to the track, and today we proved him wrong,” an overjoyed Jordan said in victory lane. “I’m very happy to be here to see it. Everybody tells me when we win we can have a good celebration, but this is the first time I’ve been here.”

That Jordan is a NASCAR fan isn’t a big shock. He grew up in North Carolina, the sport’s home. He played college basketball for the Tarheels. Jordan’s dad worked on race cars. 

His talents and passion led Jordan to basketball, where he was arguably the greatest player of all time. But Jordan never lost that passion for stock car racing. 

Years after his basketball retirement, Jordan entered the ownership fold with Denny Hamlin and Toyota in 2021. Three years later, on the same weekend when the NBA playoffs were tipping off around the country, Jordan saw his organization make another key step forward. 

“We’ve been working hard trying to get ourselves up to where we can compete against all the top guys in this sport,” Jordan said. “We’ve done a heck of a job just to be where we are. For us to win a big race like this, it means so much to me for the effort that the team has done. 

“I’m all in. I love it. It replaces a lot of the competitiveness I had in basketball, but this is even worse because I have no control.”

Good, Bad and Ugly

Bad: Ford throws away a key opportunity

If you’re a Ford fan, you don’t need me to tell you this. But I’ll say it anyways. 

This has been an awful Cup season for Ford so far. And Sunday was a waste of a key opportunity to stop the bleeding. 

It’s not that the Blue Ovals have been awful this year. Four of the 16 drivers in the provisional playoff field are in Ford machinery. But a lack of top end pace has kept the group from reaching victory lane in the opening 10 races. 

With Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing dominating the ’standard’ race weekends, a wild card track like Talladega offered a unique opportunity for Ford to take a race win and close the gap. 

Coming off Turn 4, the brand seemed poised to cash in on the opportunity. Michael McDowell led the field onto the front stretch. Brad Keselowski and Noah Gragson were the two directly behind him with a chance to pass for the win.

That’s three Ford drivers ahead of the field with a half-mile to go. Surely they wouldn’t blow that chance, right? 

Well… About that. 

Keselowski backed up to Gragson coming off of Turn 4 and got a huge run on McDowell. The 2021 Daytona 500 winner blocked Keselowski’s initial move to the outside, but Keselowski dove back to bottom and got another push from Gragson. 

That’s where things began to go wrong. McDowell dove back low to block. The two made contact. McDowell spun up the track. 

Chaos ensued. 

Keselowski and Gragson kept rolling, but the stack up slowed their pace. That allowed Reddick to slip by for the win. 

McDowell crashed out in 31st behind them, taking the majority of the field with him. 

“When I pulled down, I thought I was going to be clear,” McDowell said afterward. “I didn’t feel like it was a super-late block. 

“Obviously, it was. My intention wasn’t all-or-nothing at that moment, it was to stop the advancement (Keselowski) had in the run.” 

Keselowski was able to see the incident for what it was afterward – a lose-lose situation for two drivers who couldn’t afford to let a potential victory slip away. 

“I don’t know that anybody did anything wrong,” he said. “I just still hate that Michael didn’t get the solid day that he deserved, and we didn’t get the win. But that’s how it goes.”

Ugly: Toyota tussle sends Erik Jones to the hospital

Before Ford’s late chaos opened the door for a Toyota victory, it seemed like Toyota had been the one to cost itself a key chance to win. 

The brand seemed to be positioning itself to control the final stage of Sunday’s race. A group including Reddick, Bubba Wallace, Denny Hamlin, Erik Jones, John Hunter Nemechek, Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs came to pit road on Lap 152, taking enough fuel to reach the finish. 

Running wide open together, the group was positioned to cycle out ahead of the rest of the field. But on Lap 157 an errant push from Nemechek led both Wallace and Jones to lose control of their cars and crash. 

The duo took Hamlin with them. Nemechek suffered significant damage, though he was able to continue. With Christopher Bell already out of the running, the incident left Toyota with a significant disadvantage for the rest o the race – one Reddick was able to overcome with a last-lap dodge. 

“Obviously, we were pushing and shoving and trying to make time with our strategy and I got pretty sideways getting into (Turn) 3 and tried to gather it up and then ended up really hard into the wall,” Jones said after his vicious crash. “It’s unfortunate. I hate it for my team and my guys.” 

Jones complained of back pain over his in-car radio after the crash. 

The Michigander was initially evaluated and released from the infield care center, but later returned to the care center and was admitted to the nearby UAB University Hospital in Birmingham. 

Legacy Motor Club said Jones was evaluated and had been released to head home to North Carolina around 12:30 p.m. ET. 

Good: Runs for struggling teams

Talladega is a track known for delivering surprising finishes at the front of the field. Drivers that are able to avoid the inevitable chaos of the Big One can typically contend for spots inside of the top-10. 

Sunday’s trip to the Alabama track lived up to that expectation. 

Gragson earned the best finish of his Cup career in third. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. returned to the top-five for the first time since the 2023 Bristol Dirt Race in fourth. 

Anthony Alfredo came home a career-best sixth for Beard Motorsports, four spots better than he managed for Front Row Motorsports in 2021. It was the second best result of Beard’s 28 Cup Series runs, following a fifth-place run at Daytona in 2022. 

“I’m really proud of Beard Motorsports and everyone on this team,” Alfredo said. “They work really hard to come to a couple races a year, and when they do it, they do it right and they know they have a shot to win. So I take a lot of pride in being the one behind the wheel. I hope I can do a lot more with them.”

Daniel Hemric quietly notched the first top-10 of his Cup return with Kaulig Racing in ninth. Harrison Burton finished one spot behind him in 10th, earning his first top-10 since last July’s trip to Pocono Raceway. 

For all but Alfredo, the results are bittersweet. The good runs came in one of the final wild card races of the 2024 regular season – a rare opportunity for struggling teams to steal a spot in the playoffs with a win. 

That didn’t happen for anyone outside of the provisional playoff field in Talaldega. But the group above at least get to bask in the glow of a solid Alabama run for the next few days. 

Notes

  • Fuel saving was the name of the game for most of the race. This resulted in comers-and-goers and helped Sunday’s race reach 73 lead changes. That’s the sixth most in NASCAR history and second most outside of tandem drafting races in the early 2010s
  • Christopher Bell can’t catch a break this year. Bell notched his fourth finish outside of the top-30 in 10 races this year, crashing out of the race in 38th. He’d be near the playoff cutline if it weren’t for the early Phoenix Raceway win. 
  • Corey LaJoie went for a wild ride in the last-lap crash. 

  • Before his role in the Toyota tussle, Nemechek led a career-high 20 laps. It’s the most a Legacy Motor Club entry has led since the rebranded team launched last year. 
  • Kyle Busch came home 27th after a late attempt to jump to the third lane sent him free-falling to the back of the field. It’s safe to say he isn’t a fan of the Next Gen cars on superspeedways. 

  • I’m going to concede this final note to The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck. It’s a point we’ve all made about broadcasts before at some stage or another. 

Race Results

  1. Tyler Reddick
  2. Brad Keselowski
  3. Noah Gragson
  4. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  5. Alex Bowman
  6. Anthony Alfredo
  7. William Byron
  8. Todd Gilliland
  9. Daniel Hemric
  10. Harrison Burton
  11. Martin Truex Jr.
  12. Chase Briscoe
  13. Ross Chastain
  14. Ryan Preece
  15. Chase Elliott
  16. Josh Berry
  17. Carson Hocevar
  18. Corey LaJoie
  19. Joey Logano
  20. Ryan Blaney
  21. Kyle Larson
  22. Ty Gibbs
  23. Austin Cindric
  24. Cody Ware
  25. Chris Buescher
  26. Daniel Suarez
  27. Kyle Busch
  28. Shane van Gisbergen
  29. Zane Smith
  30. Austin Dillon
  31. Michael McDowell
  32. BJ McLeod
  33. John Hunter Nemechek
  34. Justin Haley
  35. Erik Jones
  36. Bubba Wallace
  37. Denny Hamlin
  38. Christopher Bell

Stage 1

  1. Austin Cindric
  2. Chase Elliott
  3. William Byron
  4. Ryan Blaney
  5. Kyle Busch
  6. Harrison Burton
  7. Christopher Bell
  8. Brad Keselowski
  9. Tyler Reddick
  10. Alex Bowman

Stage 2

  1. Joey Logano
  2. Austin Cindric
  3. Kyle Larson
  4. Austin Dillon
  5. Ross Chastain
  6. Tyler Reddick
  7. Chris Buescher
  8. Chase Elliott
  9. Ryan Preece
  10. Ty Gibbs

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To see the current playoff picture, check out our weekly Playoff Points update. 

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(Top photo credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography)

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