‘It’s a Death Trap to Pull Out:’ NASCAR Cup Drivers Sound Off on Talladega Racing

LINCOLN, Ala. — Alex Bowman pushed Carson Hocevar out to the lead on the final lap of the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday (April 26), but he couldn’t then go for the win himself.

Bowman, who hasn’t won a NASCAR Cup Series race since 2024, had to settle for third. He didn’t dare pull out of line and risk it.

That’s how hard it was to pass at a racetrack that prides itself on being the one place on the NASCAR circuit where anyone can force themselves to the front.

“The Next Gen car, we’re just like gridlocked two-by-two, right?” Bowman said. “Like nobody can really do anything. You’re just pushing the leaders back and forth, and it takes like some big mistakes for things to shuffle or get going. Yeah, it’s just a very different style of speedway racing than what you see on Saturdays [in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series], and still, you need a good car and need all the right things to be good at it.”

Chase Elliott finished one spot behind Bowman in fourth, and he echoed his Hendrick Motorsports teammate’s sentiment.

“It gets to the end and then you just get in those two lanes, and man, it’s a death trap to pull out of line and try a third lane,” Elliott said. “Like, it doesn’t go when everyone is pushing at that pace around the bottom two lanes.”

And that’s what the final stage and some of stage two consisted of in Sunday’s race. The field ran two-by-two with a third lane unable to get going. Zane Smith, who scored his first top five of the season in fifth, noted the only way a driver behind the leaders can do anything is if they capitalize on a mistake.

“How these superspeedways go when everyone’s going hard, it’s just two lanes at Talladega and a little bit too much to create that third lane,” Smith told Frontstretch. “Yeah, I mean you’re just hoping that someone throws a bad block and it kind of just conveyor belts your lane forward.”

Kyle Busch scored his and Richard Childress Racing’s first top 10 of a difficult season so far by finishing 10th, but even the two-time Cup champion and two-time Talladega winner was unable to get any closer to the front.

“There was a few guys in the back that were trying to do it [form a third lane],” Busch said. “They didn’t have numbers, but it just always is too far around, and it ends up going back(wards).”

Noah Gragson‘s ninth-place result was his first top 10 of the season and first since the Coca-Cola 600 in May 2025. But his frustration with the racing still dominated the conversation when he spoke with Frontstretch.

“If you’re not within the first two rows there at the end, you’re either going to get caught up in the wreck if you’re right behind that, so you might as well just run in the back, because the pace is so fast that we just run double file on the bottom,” Gragson told Frontstretch. “At the same time, we still had the equal opportunity to get up there and establish that track position, but then you’re getting your back bumper hammered off for the last two stages for 90 laps, and I don’t know if you really want to be in that position either.

“So with that being said, I don’t know if it was the most exciting thing running two wide, just not a lot of passes or excitement with strategy, but it is what it is.”

The gridlock racing came after stage one featured heavy fuel saving as drivers tried to make it through the stage with one or two pit stops.

“I saved as much fuel as I ever have and could have very easily taken a nap at a couple points,” Bowman said. “I think we all knew how that was gonna go with the way the [stage] lengths kind of played out.

“I don’t know if there’s a complete fix, but, yeah, had to save a lot of fuel. It’s kind of part of the game here a little bit.”

NASCAR altered the stage lengths in advance of Sunday’s race to have a 98-lap first segment followed by two 45-lappers. It wasn’t intended to fix the fuel saving but relieve it some. That didn’t appear to work.

“Hopefully, we can, yeah, find a way to mix it up,” Elliott said. “I mean, it was worth a shot today [with different stage lengths] I thought for sure. Definitely probably still a little work to do to make it perfect.”

For Gragson and others, the race with the new stage lengths played out like they thought it would.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a top 10, like we still had a good day,” Gragson said. “It’s just I think we all kind of knew that coming into this race how it was gonna go. We’re gonna save the whole first 98 laps and then you just got to have track position for the last two and then you’re at the mercy of the guy behind you if you’re leading. So, just waiting for the wreck the last two stages, which we saw. There was a big wreck.”

Indeed, the start of stage two was the only instance of the race that featured extended three-wide action with drivers able to make moves. That ended after The Big One on lap 115 collected 26 cars within the 40-car field, reducing the energy inside the draft going forward.

“Do you want to save fuel,” Joey Logano said after that incident, “Or do you want to wreck?”

Neither answer helped the competition on track. For the rest of the race, the third lane could do nothing.

To be fair, Bowman tried to offer up solutions to the current problems with superspeedway racing. Granted, he wasn’t as down on it as some other drivers were: that’s expected after notching his best finish of the year.

“I just think it takes a massive change with the racecar, like, fundamentally,” Bowman said. “I don’t know if that’s downforce or horsepower or drag or tire. I have no idea, but just like I personally feel like the car is so draggy that you can have these big runs and you pull out of line and you just stop, right? You see the third lane get up there and make hay for a minute and then they just die.

“So maybe get drag off of them and knock speed out of them with horsepower. I don’t know, because obviously like they [NASCAR] can’t just be like, oh, we’re gonna take drag off today, because then we’ll go 220 miles an hour, right? So they’re in a box, and I don’t know. I’m sure there’ll be really smart people trying to figure it out or maybe they’re happy with it. I don’t know. I finished third. I’m not that mad about it, but it doesn’t sound like you guys are happy.”