Fox names the wrong winner of Sunday's Talladega NASCAR race

When it comes to the finishes of NASCAR Cup Series superspeedway races, post-race results adjustments are often made because of the fact that the unofficial results aren't always accurate.

It can be sometimes tough to judge, with multiple wrecks happening at once, who is running where at what time, who crossed the finish line first, and who was ahead of whom at the time of caution (if there was one).

Unsurprisingly, a few adjustments were made after Sunday's 188-lap Jack Link's 500 at the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) high-banked Talladega Superspeedway oval in Lincoln, Alabama.

However, one such adjustment that was not made was who actually won the race.

Spire Motorsports' Carson Hocevar earned his first career victory, and it was the team's first since Justin Haley scored one of the great upsets of all-time at Daytona International Speedway in 2019, when he was literally running 27th as green flag racing ended that afternoon.

We all know that Hocevar has been compared to Dale Earnhardt for his aggressive driving style, and while we aren't necessarily fans of comparing any modern driver to the "Intimidator" for any reason, much less before he even wins a race, now Hocevar can indeed say that he is a Cup Series race winner.

Perhaps Fox got so hooked on the "Earnhardt, Earnhardt, Earnhardt!" thing that they thought Hocevar was in the No. 3 car, because their post-race scoring pylon showed Richard Childress Racing's Austin Dillon, who has driven the No. 3 Chevrolet since 2014, as the race winner.

Dillon was actually scored 18th after being involved in one of the last-lap wrecks, although NASCAR adjusted that afterward to 19th (not first) when they promoted Joe Gibbs Racing's Christopher Bell, who was also involved in a wreck, from 21st to 17th.

Evidently, the Fox broadcast team had folks so confused that even Racing Reference credited Dillon as having led the final lap.

We do have to give them credit here, though, because lap 189 didn't actually exist on Sunday.

It's no secret that Fox's Cup Series broadcasts have been criticized, and many times rightfully so, but this one is almost too funny to come down hard on.

Plus, credit to Mike Joy for calling out Stephen A. Smith's boneheaded remarks about how NASCAR drivers aren't athletes, a comment we're going to assume was made with exactly zero career races watched and/or attended.

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