Photo: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Who Won?
Kyle Busch. He overcame a pit road speeding penalty in the final stage to score his 97th Xfinity Series win.
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Busch goes back to school
A glance at the finishing results would seem to indicate a typical affair for the Xfinity Series on Monday. Kyle Busch won for the 97th time in the series, adding to his record and leaving the field battling for second.
But the rare Memorial Day race was far from the usual affair. Busch had to work hard and overcome mistakes to add the latest triumph to his NASCAR resume.
Without qualifying being held, Busch had to start back in 18th. He quickly worked his way through traffic and took the lead for the first time on Lap 32, but spent the majority of the race’s opening two stages embroiled in a battle with Kaulig Racing’s Ross Chastain.
Chastain started on pole after the field was set by a random draw. The Floridian wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunity, pacing the opening 31 laps and running up front throughout the first half of the race.
Busch mounted challenges and took the lead on multiple occasions, but Chastain passed him back on two separate restarts and proved difficult to pass. At one point in Stage 2 Busch even gave Chastain a light tap, sending him up the track. But Chastain kept rolling on the high lane, powering back to the lead and bringing Chase Briscoe with him for second.
At the end of each stage Busch found himself on top, but he led just 25 of the opening 90 laps. Chastain paced 65 laps during the same stretch and 68 laps overall – the most he’s ever led in a race with Kaulig Racing.
Chastain ended up with damage after running through oil and hitting the wall in the final stage. He rebounded to finish fourth but was most proud of his ability to run with Busch early in the night.
“To go head-to-head with Kyle and not lose a restart to him checked a lot of boxes in my mind,” Chastain said. “He’s still so dang good at all points of the run. Even thought I was strong on the restarts, lap five, 10, 15, it was tough for me to put together the consistent aggressiveness that he’s able to.”
Busch seemed to find his usual rhythm in Stage 3, stretching out to a massive lead and threatening to make the race a snoozer over a green flag run that stretched 57 laps. But when the lengthy period without a caution brought Busch to pit road for fuel and tires, the Nevadan made a major mistake.
With no practice or qualifying, Xfinity Series competitors got only one installation run down pit road during pace laps to dial in their gauges for pit road speed. During the lone round of green flag stops Busch was one of many drivers to be penalized for speeding, joined by Briscoe and Brandon Jones in committing the error.
Had the race played out under green from there, the mistake might have kept Busch from victory lane. But a caution flew shortly afterward on Lap 156 when Timmy Hill’s No. 66 lost a motor, dropping fluid on the track that resulted in contact with the wall for Briscoe and Chastain.
Busch was a lap down at the time of caution, but took a wave-around and rejoined the lead lap. Over the final 40 laps he rallied back to the front amid a quintet of cautions, gaining a few positions in each run and even sneaking in another pit stop for fresh tires along the way.
By Lap 190 of the 200-lap scheduled distance Busch was back in front. But he wasn’t done being challenged by the stars of NASCAR’s second tour.
A final caution on Lap 198 forced the field to NASCAR Overtime, resulting in a two-lap sprint to the finish. Busch restarted in the lead on the outside lane, but was outdone on the restart by Austin Cindric on older tires. The Team Penske prospect cleared Busch coming off of Turn 2 and led him to the white flag.
Had he held on for one more lap, Cindric could have claimed his first oval win in dramatic fashion. But in the end he got loose battling Busch in the final set of corners, sliding up the track and dropping to third.
“It just didn’t work out for us,” Cindric said. “I was on older tires, and everyone else on older tires ended up crashing. It’s hard to beat the best in the business on older tires.
“I got a great push from Daniel (Hemric, on the final restart). I’m shocked the restart zone went as well as it did. That was a big struggle for me all night. I knew I was going to have to defend in (turns) 3 and 4 and took the top in (turns) 1 and 2.
“He just had way more grip than I did. The heat cycles were killer. I never lifted driving into (turn) 3 on the final lap. I just gave up second but didn’t really care at that point. I just wanted to win the race.”
Despite the many challenges, Busch prevailed once again. But after climbing out of his special Appalachian State University-branded No. 54 Toyota, Busch admitted that he’d been taken to school himself a bit along the way.
“It was interesting, and it was crazy,” Busch said. “Earlier in the race, Ross Chastain gave me a hell of a run on a restart, and then right there, Austin gave me a hell of a run on that restart and I thought picking the outside lane would be the sure launch, and those guys would spin their tires down there and not get going.”
He later went on to describe the last-lap battle with Cindric.
”When I got to the inside of him, we just had a drag race down the backstretch and I knew I just had to throw it off into three as far as I thought I could stand and knew that hopefully my tires would overdo his tires and I could come out the other end,” he said. “That was my only game plan and fortunately it worked.”
The last-lap moved worked, as did the spirited comeback along the way. But none of it came easy for Busch as he worked overtime on a Monday night.
Hard racing
Monday’s final laps brought a dramatic conclusion to the Alsco 300, but the laps that preceded it were messy at best.
Over the course of 40 laps, 13 cars were involved in five crashes that eliminated a host of contenders for strong finishes and stretched out the conclusion of the race.
Blame for the first two incidents may not be fully attributable to the drivers themselves, with Chase Briscoe and Austin Hill suffering flat tires, and Briscoe’s in particular tied to earlier damage from driving through fluid and hitting the wall.
But the final three accidents saw competitors in the top-10 make contact that took contenders out and allowed others to rise to surprise finishes.
The first accident happened on Lap 184, when Myatt Snider was sent into the outside wall after contact with Justin Allgaier.
Tight racing got a bit too tight.@MyattSnider gets turned on the backstretch. pic.twitter.com/SLlCwMNmu8
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) May 26, 2020
After a quick cleanup, the field restarted on Lap 189. But the race quickly fell back under yellow when Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Riley Herbst and Brandon Jones were involved in an incident with Justin Haley.
Put the caution flag back out! @rileyherbst goes around!
Up front, @KyleBusch took over the lead. pic.twitter.com/3w50XeLc9r
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) May 26, 2020
An attempt at a final restart on Lap 197 saw a host of contenders crash before they could get spread out. Noah Gragson got loose while racing under Harrison Burton, washed up the track and triggered an incident that damaged Burton’s car and eliminated both Justin Haley and Tommy Joe Martins.
Multiple hard hits in a late-race wreck at @CLTMotorSpdwy. pic.twitter.com/1jSLgRN82x
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) May 26, 2020
The hardest hit of the night went to Martins, who slammed the inside wall in the crash. But the bigger blow for the Mississippian came financially and emotionally, as what could have been the best finish in his Xfinity Series career ended instead with a wrecked race car in 24th.
“Lowest I’ve ever been,” he said in a tweet. “(Two) laps away from my first ever NASCAR top-10 with a guaranteed top-12 & we wind up 5 laps down in 24th, totaling our best car, probably a ($)75k wreck. Feels like it’s just never gonna happen for me.”
The attrition brought an early end to many strong runs, but it also allowed for a few surprises in the top-10.
Allgaier overcame his contact with Snider to salvage a fifth-place effort. Snider also bounced back, sneaking into the top-10 over the final laps. Brett Moffitt and Our Motorsports followed a strong Darlington run with a sixth-place showing, and Brandon Brown honored the Coastal Carolina University Class of 2020 with an eighth-place effort.
The rampant cautions also added to the drama of the battle at the front of the field, catching the eye of the race’s eventual winner. Busch noted the incidents as a sign of the times in motorsports.
“These guys are certainly not watching very many old races with Tony Stewart, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson, or any of the guys that were really good in our sport for years,” Busch said of the current Xfinity Series field. “Just race etiquette and how you race. They’re running hard and I’ve been seeing some of that stuff with guys racing in Late Models, K&N and ARCA, puts themselves in a bad spot sometimes and they tear up equipment sometimes. Other times it gives them a win, gives them a spot or gives them a good finish and makes their sponsors happy.
“I can see both sides to it. Growing up in one era and seeing how it was and now racing still with some of these guys in this era, it just makes it seem like some things have really changed. You just have to keep your eyes open.
“Some of those guys, when they’re running around teammates, they do a pretty good job of cutting you some slack. A couple of other guys when you run around them, they do a pretty good job of cutting you some slack. But many of them, they run hard.”
Other Notes
- Daniel Hemric’s going to reach the top of the mountain eventually, right? The former Cup Series competitor notched his sixth runner-up run on Monday, the most of any without a win in NASCAR’s second tour.
- Just how caution-heavy was Monday’s race? The Xfinity Series had more cautions (11) in 300 miles than occurred in the Coca-Cola 600 (8), with 26.1% of the race ran under the yellow flag.
- Austin Cindric’s off to a solid oval start. The Team Penske prospect has four top-fives in six starts, just 10 behind the 14 he managed in the entirety of 2019. Cindric’s 7.5 average finish is his best, and that’s without any road courses – where he traditionally excels.
- Dillon Bassett isn’t scoring headlines, but he is proving consistent for Mario Gosselin. Bassett’s finished in the top-15 in four of his eight Xfinity starts, with finishes of 18th or better in each race he’s completed without a crash.
- Ryan Sieg was the most consistent driver outside of the title contenders before Monday, but mechanical issues trapped him in 28th at Charlotte. It was Sieg’s first finish outside of the top-15 since the tour’s last trip to Charlotte for the Roval race in Sept. 2019.
- Hidden in the pack was a career-best result for Bayley Currey, who brought home an 18th-place finish for Mike Harmon Racing – the team’s best-ever performance on an intermediate oval.
- Monday marked the first race for SS Green Light Racing’s newly-formed alliance with Rick Ware Racing, which saw Garrett Smithley in the No. 07 Chevrolet. The group got off to a quiet start, dropping 10 laps down with car issues in 31st. Joe Graf Jr. faired better, bringing home a 19th-place result after a quiet evening.
