Corey Day hits the NASCAR O’Reilly Series jackpot in a back-and-forth Las Vegas Motor Speedway battle with Kvapil in the Focused Health 302.
LAS VEGAS – In one of the most thrilling finishes of the season, 20-year-old Hendrick Motorsports rookie driver Corey Day prevailed in a final-lap back-and-forth with 23-year-old JR Motorsports racer Carson Kvapil to claim his third career NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series victory in Saturday’s Focused Health 302 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Corey Day: Jackpot Win
Day and Kvapil exchanged the lead four times in the last 12 laps before Day made a daring pass – after brushing the wall multiple times – with two laps remaining to solidify a trophy hoist ultimately decided by a slight 0.287 seconds.
“Oh man, I just was so tight there and so scared I was going to go down and plow on the bottom let him get by me.” said a grinning Day, who started his No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet from pole position, won the opening stage, and led a career-high 136 of the 201 laps.
“Just a great car. We struggled over the summer, to tell you the truth. Won Talladega (in April) and then Dover pretty close and then just went dry. This feels really good. A dominant day for us for sure, great car.
“I knew we’d be a title contender from the start of the year,” added Day, whose win puts him fifth in the 12-driver championship rankings with five races remaining on the season.
“Just had a dry summer there, but we’re getting things rolling back in the right direction. We’ll just keep working.”
Disappointment for Carson Kvapil
Kvapil, who, like Day, also earned his first career series wins this season (at Indianapolis and Iowa), was understandably disappointed to lose out on Saturday’s victory, but also encouraged with the showing. It moved him into second place in the championship standings, now 19 points behind Haas Factory Team’s Sheldon Creed, who finished 13th.
“I feel like our stuff was really good around the bottom,” Kvapil said. “Had a really good car today. Props to those guys for making us a top-three car. There at the end, I thought the 17 [Day] was pretty stout. Some lapped traffic held him up there, and I was able to find some speed at the bottom of [turns] one and two. Just never really tried the fence. I knew once I got in front of him what would be best for me was to run the bottom. He ran the top and just hit a perfect corner.”
The Focused Health 302 Results
Reigning series champion, Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love finished just behind the duel up front, in third place, followed by JGR teammates William Sawalich, one of four drivers among the top-ten not Chase-eligible, and Taylor Gray.
Haas Factory Team’s Sam Mayer – another Chase-eligible driver – finished sixth, having turned in an impressive comeback. He won Stage 2 and led 40 laps (second to Day) but had to rally from the rear of the field after a pit stop penalty during the Stage 2 break.
Non-Chase-eligible drivers Jeremy Clements, William Sawalich, and Anthony Alfredo finished seventh, eighth, and tenth, respectively, with Chase driver Austin Hill taking ninth place.
Justin Allgaier and Brandon Jones
It was an especially impactful race for former series champion and the season’s most productive team, JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier. He was collected in an accident on lap 55 with fellow Chase competitor, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Brandon Jones.
Just after winning the race off pit road for the restart from the first stage break, Jones’ No. 20 Toyota had a problem and drifted up into Allgaier’s No. 7 Chevrolet in the second turn, putting it into the wall. Both cars were towed back to the garage. Allgaier was able to return to the track with 84 laps remaining and made a single lap to move up a position in the race finishing order.
“I checked up and tried to be able to sneak by him [Jones] on the outside, but it just didn’t work out,” said Allgaier. “I hate it for everybody on the seven team. Obviously, we’ve had lots of speed everywhere we’ve gone all year, but to start the Chase off like this has been pretty frustrating. But we’ll go next week and try to win another race. Disappointing end to a day I thought we were making some headway.”
The O’Reilly Series Point Standings
It was only the second DNF of the season for the six-race winner Allgaier, who held an enormous 229-point advantage atop the regular season standings before the points reset for the Chase run. Still, his 34th-place result dropped the regular-season champion from second to fourth in the standings – 31 points off the leader Creed.
Sheldon Creed continues leading the series points standings by 19 points over Carson Kvapil. Jesse Love (-21) holds third place, while Justin Allgaier (-30) and Corey Day (-41) round out the top five.
Up Next
The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series returns to action next Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The Blue Cross NC 250 starts at 4 p.m. ET on the CW, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. This marks the first Fall race on the 1.5-mile Charlotte oval since 2017, when Alex Bowman hoisted the trophy driving for Chip Ganassi Racing.
