By: Ashley McCubbin

When it comes to restrictor plate racing, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. can be one of the most entertaining drivers to watch as he makes moves that leave you shocked or shaking your head – all the name of putting himself in the right position to win. It almost worked out on Monday, as he scored a runner-up finish.

Whether it was making the move from one lane to the other quickly, or accepting the big long pushes or delivering one of his own, Stenhouse could have easily filled a highlight reel of his own. There’s always risk in those moves as the smallest ill-timed move may result in an incident, but he said it was all about putting himself in position to win.

“For the longest time we weren’t sure if the rain was going to come,” he told POPULAR SPEED. “We wanted to get stage points.  I feel like I have a style of drafting that when I get in different lanes, when I’m leading the lanes, I feel like I can pull that lane to the lead.  I think it showed for the longest time the Penske cars were lined up on the bottom.  Nobody could seem to get alongside of them.  Myself, the 18, I think maybe the 95 or 41 was behind them.

“I felt like my technique and aggressiveness on the side draft, along with Kyle Busch’s aggressiveness and pushing, got us back to the lead.  Ultimately ended up getting us 10 points and winning the stage.”

Stenhouse added it boiled down to wanting to have track position, as he learned from the couple times he lost it, you could not quickly make it back to the front with the field being three-wide at times. In those moments, he said he waited for it to chill out, before returning back to the front.

While the styled paid off on Monday, it has not always been that smooth for Stenhouse as he has earned a reputation at times for causing incidents on the restrictor plate tracks, as cited by Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch in past years.

That shows in his finishes at Daytona International Speedway, with just two top-five’s and six finishes outside the top-10 in his last eight starts. But one of those was a win, when he took the checkered in the Coke Zero 400 in 2017.

However, he has become one of those whom always shine through when the series heads to Alabama. He has just three finishes outside of the top-five in his last eight starts at Talladega, including a victory in 2017.

That could have easily been another win on Sunday, if the late restart had worked out better. Instead, it was Erik Jones and Ryan Blaney getting away, with their fending banging allowing Stenhouse to sneak in for second.

“It’s disappointing for sure,” he commented. “You work all day long, playing different scenarios out in your head, how you’re going to be the first one across the start/finish line.  It does have a lot to do with all the other cars that are racing, who is pushing you, how they can push you, what moves they make.

“A lot is in your control, a lot is circumstantial.  You just got to keep putting yourself in those positions every race, especially on the speedways, to eventually get them to click off. People that I worked with all race, if I had them behind me there at the end I would have felt a little more comfortable because we worked really well together.  When you got all the Fords there lined up, it was kind of tough.  I didn’t feel like anybody was going to go with me.

“We ended up in the bottom lane by ourselves.  It ended up working out to get back to second.  But definitely frustrating not to win.  All in all, man, it’s still a good run for our team.  We carried a lot of momentum from Daytona, bringing the same racecar down here to Talladega, it still being fast.  That’s a positive.  We got more speedway races to go.”