Austin Cindric scores Talladega victory, nipping Ryan Preece at finish

Austin Cindric held off Ryan Preece by 22-thousandths of a second to claim his first victory of the season and give Team Penske its first win of the year, Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.

It is Cindric’s third career victory and snaps a 30-race winless streak for the 26-year-old driver.

“We talk about it in every single one of those meetings why we haven’t won one of these races, just really proud of the effort,” Cindric told Fox after the race.

Cindric is the 10th different winner in the last 10 races at Talladega. He entered Sunday’s race 22nd in the points.

The key point came during the final green-flag pit cycle. Cindric’s team had the quickest pit stop at 3.2 seconds on Lap 172 of the 188-lap event to help him get to the front. He led seven of the final 17 laps. The race featured 67 lead changes among 23 drivers.

Kyle Larson finished second. It is his best result at Talladega. William Byron placed third, giving him five consecutive top 10s at Talladega. Noah Gragson finished a season-best fourth. Chase Elliott finished fifth.

Ryan Blaney finished 37th in the 39-car field when his car was damaged as some teams slowed off Turn 4 to pit in the opening stage. Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch made contact. Blaney tried to get by the cars but hit Keselowski’s car, ending the race for both.

Brad Keselowski finished 36th. This marks the third of 10 races this season that Keselowski has failed to finish. He has finished 26th or worse in seven of 10 races this year.

“It was just a stack of guys trying to come to pit road as fast as they could and we were kind of the ham in the sandwich that got squeezed,” Keselowski said. “I waved down the backstretch to let everybody know I was gonna pit and I came off of (Turn) 4 and everybody was so tight behind me that I didn’t even have a chance to turn left.”

On the ensuring restart, a tap from Denny Hamlin caused Christopher Bell, who was leading the top line, to veer into Chris Buescher, who was leading the inside lane. Both shot down the track and hit the inside SAFER barrier on the backstretch. Both cars were eliminated.

Stage 1 winner: Kyle Larson

Stage 2 winner: Bubba Wallace

Next: The series races at 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday, May 4 at Texas Motor Speedway on FS1.