The last 20 laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Phoenix Raceway offered a very rare sight.
The top three cars jockeying for the lead were all piloted by drivers who had yet to win in the Cup Series.
During those 20 laps Chase Briscoe, Tyler Reddick and Ross Chastain fought through two restarts in hopes of winning the Ruoff Mortgage 500. Either of them would have joined Alan Kulwicki (1988) and Bobby Hamilton (1996) as the only Cup drivers who earned their first career wins at Phoenix.
“On the last of the two restarts, I feel like that’s probably worst case scenario for me,” Briscoe said. “You know, Ross and Tyler are probably two of the most aggressive guys on restarts.”
In the end it was Briscoe, making his 40th Cup start, who took the checkered flag after leading 101 laps.
In his wake, Chastain matched his career-best finish of second. Reddick finished third.
For Chastain, making his 119th start, the result came a week after he led a career-best 83 laps and finished third at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“That was so much fun to get to race like that at this level,” Chastain said. “Trackhouse Racing believes in me. Advent Health. These people, they believed in me early in the season whenever stuff wasn’t going great. If we can keep putting these together, that’s so cool to race with Tyler and Chase.
“That’s everything I’ve ever wanted. My crew chief (Phil Surgen), people don’t know how good he is. His adjustments this year have been so incredible. He gave me exactly what I needed. We came up one spot short. But I’m so happy.”
Chastain has now finished second twice in his Cup career. The first occurred last year at Nashville Superspeedway.
Reddick, in his third full-time Cup season with Richard Childress Racing, has finished in the top five seven times in 78 starts.Â
“It was a lot of fun,” Reddick said. “Everyone on this team did a really good job all day. … My pit crew did an amazing job, had a good restart at the end to put ourselves in position.
“It was a fun day. Nice way to recover from a mistake that late in the race, be battling for the win. Great day. We’ll see what else we can learn from this and see what lies ahead.”