STEWART-HAAS RACING
GEICO 500
Date: April 24, 2022
Event: GEICO 500 (Round 10 of 36)
Series: NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway (2.66-mile oval)
Format: 188 laps, broken into three stages (60 laps/60 laps/68 laps)
Race Winner: Ross Chastain of Trackhouse Racing (Chevrolet)
Stage 1 Winner: Bubba Wallace of 23XI Racing (Toyota)
Stage 2 Winner: William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports (Chevrolet)
SHR Race Finish:
● Kevin Harvick (Started 24th, Finished 10th / Running, completed 188 of 188 laps)
● Aric Almirola (Started 23rd, Finished 13th / Running, completed 188 of 188 laps)
● Cole Custer (Started 29th, Finished 29th / Engine, completed 98 of 188 laps)
● Chase Briscoe (Started 17th, Finished 37th / Accident, completed 56 of 188 laps)
SHR Points:
● Aric Almirola (10th with 265 points, 103 out of first)
● Kevin Harvick (11th with 252 points, 116 out of first)
● Chase Briscoe (12th with 246 points, 122 out of first)
● Cole Custer (26th with 167 points, 201 out of first)
SHR Notes:
● Harvick earned his fourth top-10 of the season and his 19th top-10 in 43 career NASCAR Cup Series starts at Talladega.
● This was Harvick’s third straight top-10 at Talladega. He finished eighth in October and fourth in last year’s GEICO 500. It is the first time since early 2015 that Harvick has had three consecutive top-10s at Talladega. In three straight races at Talladega in 2014-2015, Harvick finished seventh (May 2014), ninth (October 2014) and eighth (May 2015).
● Almirola finished seventh in Stage 2 to earn four bonus points.
● Custer led one lap to increase his laps-led total at Talladega to eight.
Race Notes:
● Ross Chastain won the GEICO 500 to score his second career NASCAR Cup Series victory, his second of the season and his first at Talladega. His margin over second-place Austin Dillon was .105 of a second.
● There were six caution periods for a total of 28 laps.
● Twenty-one of the 39 drivers in the race finished on the lead lap.
● Chase Elliott remains the championship leader after Talladega with a 21-point advantage over second-place Ryan Blaney.
Sound Bites:
“We had a good GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang. We just got a little behind on that last pit sequence and lost some track position. I just would kind of get up halfway and fall back, get up, and fall back. That was just kind of how the day went for us and we made it to the finish.” – Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang
“We tried to play it safe in the first stage and stayed out of trouble for the most part all day. We did have a piece of debris shoot through the nose of our Smithfield/IHOP Ford early in the race and we had to pit to repair that. We had good balance all day for the most part. There at the end, we just didn’t get hooked up with the run we needed to push up to the front. We left Talladega in one piece, so there is something positive to take away from the day.” – Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 10 Smithfield / IHOP Mustang
“Just toward the end of the stage and we were trying to get stage points because at the end of this deal you never know what can happen. That is not normally the mentality I would go with. I normally try to ride around and wait until the end. It seems like we always get so desperate toward the end of the stages. I felt like if I could get to the bottom I could get to eighth or ninth, if I was lucky. Looking back, that obviously wasn’t the right decision. The 16 (Daniel Hemric), I don’t know what happened to him. I know I got into the back of somebody and then the 16, I saw him on the apron and he kind of landed in my lap when I came back across the racetrack. It was a hard hit but I feel a lot better than I thought I was going to when I saw the hit coming. All good. Unfortunate to kind of have a huge hole points-wise now. I guess we go to Dover next week and see if we can have a better result.” – Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Dover 400 on May 1 at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway. The race begins at 3 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by FS1 and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
