DAYTONA BEACH, Fla – What a dream scenario for Kaulig Racing this weekend at the Daytona International Speedway. The once small team in the NASCAR XFINITY Series led 86 of 100 laps in Friday night’s Circle K Firecracker 250 and finished 1-2-3 in the end. They also won both stages in the race as well.
Florida native Ross Chastian led a race-high 49 laps in his No. 16 Chevrolet including the final en route to his second career XFINITY Series win and fourth career victory in NASCAR.
Chastain, 26, was joyous as he finally got a win on his hometrack. The Alva watermelon farmer has had all his highs come back down to lows over the course of his NASCAR career.
He was always labeled that driver that could do something if given a good race car. For a majority of his racing career, he raced for some underfunded teams. Then, his break came in 2018. Instead of racing full time with JD Motorsports, he took his money to a three race deal with Chip Ganassi Racing.
It was a chance to bet on himself. Perform in a CGR car and you’d open up more doors. But, if you don’t perform, you’d likely never get another shot in top caliber equipment.
Chastain, won the pole at Darlington in his first start but crashed out after leading the most laps that day. The next race, he’d reach victory lane for the first time in his NASCAR career. He’d close out with a great result in Richmond which led to what he thought was a full season ride with CGR in the XFINITY Series for 2019.
Then, came the DC Solar fall out which inevitably led to the team shutting their doors on the XFINITY Series side which meant Chastain was now unemployed.
Luckily, JDM took him back and Kaulig came calling for a part time role. He also had a full time ride in the Truck Series too.
After a solid start to both series’ seasons, Chastain won in the Truck Series and declared points in that series instead of NXS. He’d win again but get the win taken away for his car failing post race inspection at Iowa. Again, another blow.
Then, he won again and now is on the verge of putting Niece Motorsports in the playoffs in the Truck Series.
On Friday night, he gave Kaulig Racing their first career win and his second top 10 of the season.
His teammate Justin Haley would finished runner-up in his No. 11 Chevrolet for his 12th top 10 finish of the season, two of which now being in the top five.
Last year, Haley crossed the finish line first in this event but was later penalized for passing below the yellow line. His win was quickly taken away. He got redemption via a second place result a year later.
AJ Allmendinger came back from a late race incident to bring his No. 10 Chevrolet home third in just his second NXS start since 2013. Allmendinger, charged hard and moved back up to fifth with two laps-to-go. Then, on the final lap, the California native got by Christopher Bell to bring Kaulig home 1-2-3. It was Allmendinger’s fifth straight top 10 finish at Daytona.
Bell, would finish fourth in his No. 20 Toyota for his 10th top 10 of the season and his third top five in his last five races on the year. He finished third in last year’s race to go along with a sixth place run back in February.
Austin Cindric battled back from an early race crash to finish fifth in his No. 22 Ford. Last year, he flipped several times towards the end of the race while this year crashing in Turn 3 in the opening laps. His Team Penske crew got his car repaired enough to hang around in the end and come away with his 13th top 10 result of 2019 including nine in the last 10 races.
Cindric’s worst finish since Phoenix back in March is 11th.
The race was delayed several hours due to a heavy rain storm that hit the Speedway near 7 p.m. ET. Once the race got going, it was wild from start to finish with a race that is no comparison to what we saw in February.
There was thrilling side-by-side race throughout the entire 250 miles. The series is back in action next Friday night at the Kentucky Speedway for the Alsco 300 (7:30 p.m. ET/NBCSN/PRN/SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Big Stars Crumble
Just look at the bottom half of the top 10 of the finishing order and it tells a big story to what happened in Friday night’s race. The heavyweights were all involved in big crashes on Friday night.
It all started on Lap 24 when Tyler Reddick came up too high up the banking while exiting Turn 4 and had to check up. That caused a chain reaction event behind him which as a result, John Hunter Nemechek, Sheldon Creed, Justin Allgaier and Cole Custer were all involved in a crash.
On Lap 46, Reddick lost it when he had a flat tire on his No. 2 Chevrolet and spun into rookie Chase Briscoe while once again existing Turn 4. Reddick, spun towards the infield grass while Briscoe hit the inside SAFER barrier extremely hard. He’d finish 36th as a result.
Allgaier, got into Reddick briefly in that incident too.
On Lap 88, we saw a big melee when Bell got into the back of Michael Annett on the backstretch. The February race winner (Annett) was collected in a huge crash that also took out Custer, Noah Gragson, Nemechek and 15 others. That brought out a 17-minute, 45-second red flag.
As a result of all this, Reddick finished 17th, Allgaier 18th, Nemechek 23rd, Annett 26th, Custer 27th and Briscoe 36th.
Much Better Race Than February
If you remember, and I know you likely don’t want to, February’s race at Daytona for the XFINITY Series was as bad as it gets. There was only 18 green flag passes for the lead. We saw 13 lead changes overall with just four cautions. A majority of the race was run single file up against the wall.
Friday night’s race was a polar opposite. We saw 18 lead changes among 7 drivers and seven cautions for 31 laps. The margin of victory was only .109-seconds. That doesn’t even rank in the top 12 all time for this race.
What’s that say?
This race was side-by-side all night and barely saw cars get single file. It was proper racing.
CircleK Firecracker 250 Results
- 16 Chastain
- 11 Haley R
- 16 Allmendinger
- 20 Bell
- 22 Cindric
- 01 Leicht
- 86 Brown R
- 38 Green
- 08 Gaulding
- 51 Clements
- 5 Mills
- 78 Miller
- 99 Parsons
- 07 Black Jr.
- 0 Smithley
- 9 Gragson R -1
- 2 Reddick -1
- 7 Allgaier -1
- 18 Herbst -2
- 25 Cockrum -3
- 66 Hill -3
- 28 Lee -3
- 23 Nemechek R OUT
- 21 Graf Jr. OUT
- 39 Sieg OUT
- 1 Annett OUT
- 00 Custer OUT
- 42 Finchum OUT
- 36 Williams OUT
- 90 Bacarella OUT
- 19 Jones OUT
- 93 Lagasse Jr. OUT
- 52 Starr OUT
- 15 McLeod OUT
- 8 Creed OUT
- 98 Briscoe R OUT
- 13 Nemechek OUT
- 4 Cassill OUT
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