Clint Bowyer Completes Pass in Tri-Oval to Win Talladega NASCAR

Clint Bowyer passes Jeff Burton to win at Talladega

What a day it has been at Talladega. I got to shoot from the top of the tallest grandstands again today and saw all kinds of bump and run craziness unfold before me. Multi-car wrecks, a hauler fire in the garage area following the race and the big pass for the win right in front of me. I also got a huge challenge from my friends at AP working with some unfamiliar equipment but all's well that ends well. It was a thrilling finish with Clint Bowyer taking an extremely close win over Jeff Burton n a swansong performance for Richard Childress Racing (RCR). Bowyer got the 100th win for RCR as he prepares to leave for Michael Waltrip's team in 2012.

While I had a great day shooting, most of the drivers in the Sprint Cup Chase had awful ones with Carl Edwards now jumping to the head of the points battle in front of Matt Kenseth and Brad Keselowski with only four races to go. My favorite Tony Stewart led quite a few laps today and remains 4th in the standings after a 7th place finish. The big surprise was Dave Blaney finishing third today behind Burton but the top two were not to be caught following the final restart with just two laps to go. Keselowski finished 4th ahead of Brian Vickers and Kasey Kahne. Denny Hamlin took 8th ahead of the "un-retired" Michael Waltrip and Martin Truex Jr. rounded out the top 10. The big losers today were Kevin Harvick who dropped three places in the season standings while Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch probably saw their chances of being crowned Sprint Cup champion fly out the window with poor finishes following their involvement in separate on track incidents.

It was my last race to shoot for this season and it started off on an emotional note with the news of Marco Simoncelli's tragic fatal accident in MotoGP, then the observance of a moment of silence and prayerful words for Indycar's Dan Wheldon before the engines were fired up. Driving in this morning, I was struck by the smell of all the campfires in the RV parks along Speedway Boulevard and I'm glad I'm not driving back to Indianapolis until tomorrow. AP still has a bunch of my images after downloading them so the slideshow with this post mainly covers the last 50 laps or so.