Less than a week after turning 39 years old, Elliott Sadler gave himself a long-awaited birthday present by winning at Talladega Superspeedway for the first time in his career.
Sadler out-raced Chris Buescher over the last three laps and led a tight pack of 16 cars across the finish line to win the Aaron’s 312 NASCAR Nationwide Series race on Saturday. It was Sadler’s first victory at Talladega Superspeedway in 29 attempts (six in the Nationwide Series and 23 Sprint Cup Series races), even though he has had fast enough cars to start on the pole at the track five times.
“This means a lot to me, especially to do it at Talladega. We finally won one here,” said Sadler, who now trails leader Chase Elliott by only one point in the Nationwide Series standings. “I’ve run upfront a lot in the last couple of laps here, but I’ve never put myself in the right situation to win.
“(Before the final restart) I was thinking about how many races I’ve lost here by not making the right decision. I played 20 different scenarios through my head on what I thought I needed to do and what position I needed to be in and who I needed to watch out for. I just took all that experience of me messing up so many times here in the past and tried to put it to good use.”
There were 86 green-flag passes for the lead in the race. That is the second-most passes in the Nationwide Series over the past seven years, and the third-most over the past ten years. Buescher tried to add one more pass to that total near the end, but was unable to muscle his way past Sadler and had to settle for second place.
“The battle at the end was incredible,” Buescher said. “I’ve never been at one of these restrictor-plate races where you could make contact like that. We were really bumping a lot out there. It was absolutely crazy.”
Regan Smith finished third, followed by David Ragan in fourth, pole-sitter Sam Hornish Jr. fifth, Joe Nemechek sixth, J.J. Yeley seventh, Landon Cassill eighth, David Starr ninth and Trevor Bayne tenth.