Chase Elliott must have felt at home on Sunday. Just a few hours from his hometown and on a track where his father won a few decades before, he embraced fans.

Elliott Wins Big At Talladega

The younger Elliott took home a Cup Series race victory at Talladega SuperSpeedway this weekend. He earned Chevrolet their first victory of the season, got his fourth win overall and avoided a race-ending crash that flipped Kyle Larson close to a half-dozen times.

The race was his first victory since October. After a restart with four laps to go, he worked with a handful of his fellow Chevy drivers to hold off the rest of the pack. It worked and he drove down victory lane only a few hours from his hometown.

His father, Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, won twice at the raceway in the 1980s.

30 SPORTS FIGURES WHO DIED IN 2018 – TRIBUTE SLIDESHOW 

“Dad’s history, obviously very cool,” Chase Elliott said. “To me the biggest piece of today was just how much of a home race it felt like after the race. I was blown away by the people and how fired up everybody was. That was an unbelievable experience. We are close to home, so that’s cool, and they made me feel that way. I couldn’t ask for much more there.”

Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman finished right behind Elliot in second, followed by rookie Ryan Preece, veteran Joey Logano and another rookie, Daniel Hemric.

Elliott’s win ended a seven-race win streak for Ford. Penske Racing had also won six of the last nine.

“We needed to win this,” said Alan Gustafson, Elliott’s crew chief. “We needed to consolidate our efforts. We needed to break the streak that one of our rivals has here.”

His teammate Bowman added that Elliott earned his victory. He said, “Well, I’m not just going to let him win, right? I’ve got to try. I knew I could get to his quarter panel. I was pretty confident I could get to his quarter panel in the tri-oval and who knows who’s going to get to the line first at that point. I thought I could do it, but it depends on the car behind you and where he goes. It would have been fun to try.”

The Cup Series will head to Delaware next Sunday for the Dover 400.

On the 172nd lap of the Alabama 500, a major collision occurred at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday in the penultimate race of the quarterfinal round of 12.

Talladega Crash NASCAR Playoffs video

The crash involved 16 cars and happened with 17 laps left when No. 78 Toyota driver Martin Truex Jr. and David Ragan seemed to slightly touch each other. Ragan, the No. 38 Ford driver, was briefly pulled to the right of the track before veering left and spinning Kurt Busch in the middle of the group of vehicles. Busch then slammed into the wall and flames went up on the 2.66-mile track as the race was stopped for the crash that Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch were also involved with.

Ryan Blaney (18th), Jimmie Johnson (24th), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (26th) and Kyle Busch (27th) missed opportunities to put themselves in relatively safe positions heading into the last race before the semifinals.

They’re all competing for NASCAR playoff spots at Kansas, where four drivers will be eliminated. Ninth-place Busch is at the cutoff. Among those currently joining Busch on the outside are Matt Kenseth, (eight points behind Johnson), Stenhouse (22 points behind) and Jamie McMurray (29 points back).

Busch has finishes of 29th and 27th in the two playoff races this round, so his 41 playoff points maintain him in contention but are not a guarantee to advance past the quarterfinals.

“I don’t know,” Busch said. “We threw away a lot of it last week. If we would have finished last week normal, we would have been fine. … We’ll have to go to Kansas and run good in all the stages and have a good day there to try to make it through.”

According to ESPN, Sunday’s crash occurred because of a miscommunication. Johnson’s spotter heard NASCAR tell the drivers to start their engines, so he told his team to begin working on the car. However, the team was discovered to have worked on the car before the red flag was lifted.

Johnson was scored like all the other cars that couldn’t continue following the wreck — by position of the last completed lap.

“Those points are so valuable,” Johnson said in unsuccessful lobbying for a ruling that he be credited with finishing ahead of any car that was stopped on the track and couldn’t continue.

TALLADEGA, AL – OCTOBER 15: Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 M&M’s Caramel Toyota, and Jimmie Johnson, driver of the #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet, are involved in an on-track incident during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Alabama 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on October 15, 2017 in Talladega, Alabama. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Getty Images)

Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffered a terrible afternoon on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, finishing in 40th place in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series GEICO 500 after being involved in two separate accidents.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Steering Wheel Comes Off At Talladega

The No. 88 Nationwide Insurace Chevrolet driver lost control of his car on lap 50 and took out teammate Kasey Kahne, and later became engrossed in a wreck by Carl Edwards. Then, an unfortunate mishap momentarily made things even worse for Earnhardt, although he was able to save himself thanks to some quick thinking.

His steering wheel suddenly came off the steering column, but Earnhardt prevented his car from hitting the wall by twisting the column with his hand.

Following the race, Earnhardt stated that the move damaged his hand but ultimately saved the car. Fortunately, he wasn’t driving at full speed.

“Luckily it was under caution. I just grabbed the shaft and steered the car that way,” said Earnhardt. “Might of ripped the skin off my hand, but I wasn’t going to let it hit the wall. That was just a freak deal.”

He then took to Twitter to express his thanks to his team, Hendrick Motorsports, for quickly attending to him after the malfunction.

AVONDALE, AZ – NOVEMBER 15:  Dale Earnhardt Jr., driver of the #88 Nationwide Chevrolet, celebrates in victory lane after winning the rain-shortened NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at Phoenix International Raceway on November 15, 2015 in Avondale, Arizona.  (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

With eight laps remaining in the Sprint Cup Series GEICO 500 race, drivers Danica Patrick and Matt Kenseth collided at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on Sunday. Patrick hit the interior wall and Kenseth’s car flipped over, with a total of 12 cars involved.

Danica Patrick Crash With Matt Kenseth

Patrick’s car, bumped from behind by Michael McDowell, slid in front of the track, hit No. 20 Toyota Camry driver Kenseth hard, and then sailed at near-full speed into the backstretch inside wall, her Chevrolet erupting into flames. Kenseth also hit the wall very hard while flipping, riding the wall upside-down and rolling back on the track.

After a long time in the infield medical center, Patrick finally emerged, evidently shaken not only by her accident but also by the overall wild atmosphere of the day.

A half-hour after the accident, she said her chest hurt when she breathed and that she had bruises from the wreck. She said a chest x-ray showed no serious injuries.

“I’m pretty sure I got hit, and the car spun toward the inside wall,” Patrick said. “It hit really hard. Everything — the steering wheel — is way out of place. I hit my foot. Hit my arm. There was fire inside the car. It kind of knocked the breath out of me a little bit.”

Kenseth climbed from his crashed racer nearby, and Patrick leaned over to catch her breath. She added that the fire inside the car caused her to be “probably the most scared” she has ever been in a race car.

“That was the worst one (wreck) so far. I have decent bruises on my arm and foot. I hit a wall at 200. And my chest hurts when I breathe.”

Patrick, 34, has been racing at the top levels of the sport — and often at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour — since debuting in the IndyCar series in 2005.

“We all kind of raced to halfway, then all raced to the rain that was coming and all raced to the end,” she said. “The whole race we were racing like we were racing to the end. There were no moments to relax. I’m sure that expanded peoples’ comfort zone at the end of the race because we were used to running close. Then some people took it to the edge.”

During the first pit stop of Sunday’s race, Patrick was also side-swiped by contact with No. 27 Chevrolet SS driver Paul Menard. Pitting among the leaders, Patrick was trying to cut across to her pit box early on pit road when she slid across the nose of Menard’s car. The two made contact and ended up stopping near the entrance to the pit road, with Patrick ending nose first toward the wall.

KANNAPOLIS, NC – AUGUST 18: (R-L) Danica Patrick, driver of the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet, Tony Stewart, co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, Sam Marson and Dave Marson, founders of Nature’s Bakery, pose for a photo opportunity after announcing a multiyear deal partnership during a press conference on August 18, 2015 in Kannapolis, North Carolina. The partnership will begin with the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.