By Zach Arnold

TALLADEGA, Ala — Luckily for Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 team, they earned a win that locked themselves into the next round of the NASCAR Playoffs. Sunday’s victory was the 29-year-old’s third triumph at Talladega; he seems to know his way around the 2.66-mile-long track.

Sunday’s 500-mile event had almost everything you could ask for when watching a superspeedway race – multi-groove racing, large crashes, and a close finish.

Joey Logano took the lead early in the race and was pushed by fellow Ford drivers for many laps afterward; he eventually lost the lead to Martin Truex Jr. and William Byron. In fact, there was not a stable dominant car in Sunday’s race, with so many lead changes in the race. Nine different drivers found themselves in the first position in the first stage.

Stage one ended early due to the first wreck of the race. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. ran out of gas with three laps remaining in the stage; with his car slow in the middle of a pack, a stack up of cars crashed with him. Some involved were Ross Chastain and Kyle Busch. Chastain would not go on to race another lap; his day ended early to put him in a tough position heading into the elimination race at the Charlotte Roval. He is nine points below the playoff cutline.

Stage two was the most calm stage of the race; still had three and four-wide racing, however, no major trouble and playoff drama throughout the stage. During green flag pit stops, some drivers were caught for speeding as Denny Hamlin and Austin Cindric would have to serve a pass-through penalty shortly after. This put both drivers a lap down, but they were both able to make it back on the lead lap some point later in the race.

Brad Keselowski would win stage two. Only four playoff drivers earned points in this stage: Keselowski, William Byron, Kyle Larson, and Tyler Reddick.

Logano and Larson led the field to the start of stage three, with Logano out front for the next 10-15 laps thanks to his former teammate Keselowski, before a three-wide battle for the lead brewed up. Unfortunately, 15 laps later, the second large wreck occurred. Keselowski, Carson Hocevar, Austin Dillon, Riley Herbst, and Ty Gibbs were all involved. Some were able to continue, but Keselowski and Dillon’s day ended here.

Until the final 500 feet on the last lap, the rest of the race ran clean. Blaney beat Kevin Harvick to the finish line by a nose, locking himself into the next round of the playoffs.

“I’ve won it by more than I have the last couple of years. That one might have been by four feet, the others were by two but you just don’t know. You just kind of drag race a line and hope you get help. William gave me a pretty good shove on the bottom. He was kind of forced to, but I wasn’t sure until Josh said something. Josh did a fantastic job on the roof as always. This is always such a special place to win at so I can’t wait to drive to Victory Lane,” Ryan Blaney said to the media post-race.

NASCAR heads to Charlotte, North Carolina for the elimination race in the round of 12. Catch the action next Sunday at 3:30 p.m. on NBC Sports.