Jack Link's 500

Jack Link's 500 — Sunday, April 26, 2026 · Talladega Superspeedway · 188 laps, 500.08 miles

The 23-year-old from Portage, Michigan, took the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet to Victory Lane at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday — his first career NASCAR Cup Series win, on the kind of late-race restart where careers are made. With two laps to go after a green-white-checkered, Hocevar got the run on Chris Buescher coming off Turn 4, cleared to the high side down the backstretch, and held the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford off by 0.114 seconds at the line.

It made Hocevar the 208th different driver to win in the Cup Series, the 13th to make his first career win at Talladega, and the second first-time winner of the 2026 season. Spire Motorsports — six years into a build that started in the back of the field — gets a Talladega trophy and a piece of NASCAR history on the same afternoon.

Pole-sitter Tyler Reddick led the field to green and the early laps were the Talladega afternoon you expect: pack racing, three-wide running, and a constant low-grade tension that something was going to go wrong. The "Big One" came on lap 113, when Ross Chastain got into the back of Bubba Wallace at the front of the field and triggered a 26-car wreck that ended the day for half the leaders. By the time the cleanup was finished and the track went green again, the pack had been pruned to a few clean cars and a lot of damaged ones — and an opportunity opened for the drivers who avoided the carnage.