For a few seconds Sunday afternoon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. looked like he had pulled off another upset at Talladega.
The four-time NASCAR Cup Series winner survived the chaos, worked his way to the front and put himself in position to steal the YellaWood 500 from the championship contenders. Coming to the checkered flag, all they needed was a successful movement to defend it.
Advertisement
Instead, Stenhouse watched Kyle Larson come charging past.
Larson completed an amazing last-lap exit to win by just 0.041 seconds over William Byron, with Stenhouse finishing third, just 0.066 seconds behind the winner.
Afterward, Stenhouse explained how a split second sentence turned a potential victory into one of the more distant closers of his season.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He explains why they went wrong at Talladega
Stenhouse had the lead coming out of Turn 4, but his position changed when Austin Hill, who was running immediately behind him, took power in the No. 33 Chevrolet lost.
Without Hill providing the impetus, Stenhouse suddenly found himself vulnerable to the cars closing in behind him.
Advertisement
William Byron in No. The 24 Chevrolet was approaching, and Stenhouse moved up the tracks to defend the position. Byron went inside anyway, but a bigger threat was coming even lower.
Larson, who had slipped to eleventh in the final lap, stormed through the field with Ross Chastain pushing him.
Stenhouse never saw it progressing in time.
“I did everything I felt like I needed to do. I just never saw No. 5.” [Larson] to come,” Stenhouse said after the race.
“I focused on No. 24” [Byron] and from which I perceived No. 5 coming from five or six positions back, I just couldn’t get down and stop him.
Advertisement
It was the kind of decision that can define an entire Talladega afternoon. Stenhouse anticipated Byron’s threat, but Larson’s attack on the interior was impossible to stop.
Stenhouse leaves Talladega with one major regret
The disappointment was made especially hard by how well Stenhouse and the Hyak Motorsports team positioned themselves in the final round.
The No. The 47-track Chevrolet had a winning position, and Stenhouse has already shown that he can hold his own against the sport’s biggest teams.
But with a few hundred yards down to the last race, he knew that things had gone completely wrong.
Advertisement
“It was an awesome day for our No. 47 NOS Energy Chevrolet team,” Stenhouse said. “They worked really hard. The team got us in a really good position to lead the race and control the race a lot in that last stage, so I was really happy about that.”
Then came the assessment of that goal.
“Just one bad move at the end, trying to stop No. 24, we gave the race to No. 5.”
Despite the disappointment, Stenhouse finished as the last driver outside of the Chase championship. It was also his fourth top-five completion of 2026, his most in a season since 2017.
Advertisement
Stenhouse knows how to win at Talladega, having claimed victories in Alabama in 2017 and 2024.
On Sunday he came down to another place. But one decision in the last corner left him watching another party.
This article was first published in GRAVIS
After Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He reveals the one mistake that cost him the Talladega Win first appeared in the Heavy.