NASCAR: AJ Allmendinger wins at Charlotte Roval
Tyler Reddick jumped into the top eight ahead of the third round of the playoffs
AJ Allmendinger won Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at the Charlotte Roval, and Tyler Reddick was the only driver to jump into the top eight in the points standings to advance to the third round.
Reddick entered the race ninth in the points standings and moved into the top eight with a sixth-place finish. Brad Keselowski was the victim of Reddick’s move, as Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain and Kyle Busch won’t move on to the third round.
Reddick is joined in the third round by William Byron, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Chris Buescher, Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr.
Allmendinger survived five restarts to lead the final 33 laps of the 109-lap race. All 46 of his laps led came in the race’s third and final stage.
Byron finished second, and Busch was third. Busch entered the race likely needing a win to advance to the third round and simply couldn’t get close enough to Allmendinger or Byron over the final green-flag run to have any shot.
"But overall, this ride is on me anyways," Busch said. He finished 34th and 25th in the first two races of the third round. "The first two weeks of this round was obviously not very good, and we didn't score any points. That's where it's at. That's where it lies. Texas, Talladega, just not being able to execute and do a good job when points were on the line.
"It sucks to be out this early, but let us do Texas over again, and I feel like we're right there."
The victory is Allmedinger’s third at NASCAR’s top level. He got his first win in 2014 at Watkins Glen and scored his second in 2021 at the Indianapolis road course.
That 2021 win came as Allmendinger was running a part-time Cup Series schedule for Kaulig Racing. This season is Allmendinger’s first full-time season in Cup since 2018, and he has three top-fives and six top-10s.
Race features seven cautions
NASCAR reimplemented stage cautions ahead of the race after the past two road course races featured one caution each. Caution flags for the end of the first and second stages were eliminated at road courses ahead of the 2023 season in an attempt to create greater strategy variance. But with NASCAR’s current Cup Series car also racing poorly on road courses and drivers tending to not run close to each other, stage cautions were brought back for the playoff event.
If NASCAR wanted more caution flags and restarts as a result, well, it got them. The race had seven caution flags, and six of them were for either crashes or mechanical problems.
Race results
1. AJ Allmendinger
2. William Byron
3. Kyle Busch
4. Ty Gibbs
5. Joey Logano
6. Tyler Reddick
7. Chris Buescher
8. Alex Bowman
9. Chase Elliott
10. Ross Chastain
11. Ryan Preece
12. Ryan Blaney
13. Kyle Larson
14. Austin Dillon
15. Christopher Bell
16. Bubba Wallace
17. Corey LaJoie
18. Brad Keselowski
19. Kevin Harvick
20. Martin Truex Jr.
21. Aric Almirola
22. Justin Haley
23. Todd Gilliland
24. Harrison Burton
25. Austin Cindric
26. Josh Bilicki
27. Austin Hill
28. Chase Briscoe
29. Mike Rockenfeller
30. Zane Smith
31. Ty Dillon
32. Michael McDowell
33. Daniel Suarez
34. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
35. Andy Lally
36. Erik Jones
37. Denny Hamlin
