Top Dog: Chad Finchum
Coming into the weekend, unless you were a true diehard NASCAR fan, it would be understandable to not know who Chad Finchum is. However, in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway (April 26), Finchum and the unchartered Garage 66 team made sure people would remember his name in the future.
Garage 66 had entered three races earlier in the season: the Daytona 500 with Casey Mears, Darlington Raceway with Timmy Hill and Bristol Motor Speedway with Finchum. It would have to qualify on speed for the Jack Link’s 500 as there were 41 entries to the event.
Finchum had run 13 prior Cup Series races in his career and mainly ran in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, making 117 starts but never finishing higher than 11th.
The Climb To The Top
With qualifying rained out, Finchum was locked into the field due to the metric used to set the lineup, and since the No. 66 team had made three starts already, it had enough points to make the cut.
When the green flag flew, Finchum was all the way back in 38th, but it did not take long for him to turn heads. With the new stage lengths to try and combat fuel saving, the first stage of the race was 98 laps, which resulted in the front-runners saving gas and deciding whether to try a one or two-stop strategy.
Finchum and Garage 66 decided to use this opening stint of the race as an opportunity to take advantage of all other cars in the pack running half-throttle. Finchum used the outside lane to get to the lead by the 10th lap of the race, and he was able to stay out front for eight laps in total, the most the team had led in a race in its history.
It was the first eight laps that Finchum had led in his Cup Series career, leaving Carl Long and the team’s pit box cheering. He was eventually passed by Denny Hamlin for the lead as he got out of line on the bottom of the racetrack but stayed well within the lead draft until the first round of stops.
That, unfortunately, was the highlight of the team’s day. Finchum eventually finished the first stage in 38th, two laps down after he committed a speeding penalty on pit road during green flag pit stops.
In the second stage, Finchum was caught up in the Big One at the end of the backstretch heading into turn 3 and had to go to the garage for repairs. However, his race was not over.
The Garage 66 team was able to repair the car and get it back on track to finish in 28th at the end of the day, six laps down.
It was a milestone day for Garage 66 and Finchum as they were able to find themselves at the top of the pylon at famed Talladega, and it was a sequence they will never forget.
Looking Ahead
While talking with Frontstretch, Finchum mentioned he and the No. 66 team will be running it back at the track next weekend at Texas Motor Speedway for next Sunday’s race (May 3). It will be Garage 66’s fourth race of the 2026 season.
Top Dog of the Lower Series
NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series: Former Daytona winner Jeremy Clements showed off his veteran drafting track skills by finishing fifth in Saturday’s Ag-Pro 300 (April 25). He started 15th and finished 10th and eighth in the two opening stages before nabbing both his first top five and top 10 of the season.
Clements moved up to 20th in the driver standings, and his No. 51 team moved up to 22nd in the owner points.
Other underdogs that finished in the top 10 were Dean Thompson in sixth and Austin Green, who finished 10th.
Small Team Scheme of the Week
Another driver who was up front at the end of the race was Erik Jones, who drove a red and black Doritos-sponsored car in a partnership with Dollar Tree.
Jones was running in the top five late in the race but got spun out after Carson Hocevar’s car got out of shape and bumped into Jones. This brought out the caution after Jones could not get his No. 43 car rolling out the grass, which cost him a lead-lap finish. At the end of the day, Jones came home one lap down in 23rd, a tough result after having a shot at the win before the incident.
Michael Bellifemini joined Frontstretch in February 2026 as a contributor. Bellifemini was born and raised in New Jersey and graduated from Seton Hall University. He called Seton Hall men's and women's basketball games for their college radio station, 89.5 FM WSOU, and continues to broadcast in the area. Outside of covering NASCAR, Bellifemini is also an avid baseball, football, basketball, and hockey fan and enjoys watching different sports leagues on a daily basis.