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Kyle Busch won the latest NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, April 23. It was Busch's second victory of the season and his first superspeedway victory in 15 years.
Busch won after Ryan Blaney got a huge run and took out race leader Bubba Wallace in overtime. The 37-year-old was scored the leader at the time of caution and made it back to the finish line.
Here are three takeaways from Saturday's NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
#3. The superspeedway package also needs tweaking
If there is one thing that is evident in the second year of Next-Gen cars, it is that certain packages need more tweaking.
As we have already seen, NASCAR has not hesitated to make changes already this season. They tweaked the short track and road course package, which led to better racing at those tracks for the most part.
Now, NASCAR needs to adjust the superspeedway package. The cars struggled to get three wide, which leads to bottleneck two-by-two pack racing.
While it is better than the single-file train racing that we usually see, it makes it very difficult to make passes, even on a wide track like Talladega.
#2. The 'big one' is not as common at Talladega
One positive of the cars not being able to go three wide and make crazy moves is that it makes big wrecks not as common now.
While there are still wrecks and the occasional 'big one', it hasn’t been as common with the Next Gen cars at the 2.66-mile superspeedway.
During last year's Talladega races, we saw a big wreck occur in the first two stages, but not in the final stage.
The final stage went green for so long that fuel became an issue. We saw Ty Gibbs and a couple of others run out of fuel on the final overtime restart.
#1. Redemption for Kyle Busch
In the Daytona 500 in February, Kyle Busch lost the race after a late race caution and overtime shenanigans. On Saturday, he was at the other end of the spectrum.
Coming to the white flag, Bubba Wallace got a huge push to get the lead. On the backstretch, Ryan Blaney got a huge push but spun out Bubba, which set off a huge wreck. Busch snaked his way through to take the yellow and checkered flags.
It’s like the saying goes, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good and on Saturday, Lady Luck was smiling on Kyle Busch.
