Cole Custer celebrated in victory lane on Saturday at Auto Club Speedway in the No. 00 Thompson Pipe / Haas CNC Ford. Custer, the third-place starter in the 300-mile event, led the field for 29 circuits to score his third career NASCAR XFINITY Series win.
Custer passed race leader Christopher Bell with 19 laps remaining and never looked back. Bell was later passed by Kyle Busch for the second spot and went on to a third-place finish. The driver of the No. 00 Ford saw the lead four times throughout the event.
Kyle Busch finished runner-up in Saturday’s Production Alliance Group 300. Busch, who started in second and entered the afternoon looking for national series win No. 200, led 98 of the 150 laps. However, late-race miscues on pit road that included a slow pit stop and an uncontrolled tire penalty, relegated the race dominator to the 13th position for the restart.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series veteran, who won both stages of the event, worked his way through the field quickly. However, Custer, eventual race winner, was no match for the No. 18 Toyota.
Christopher Bell rounded out the top three finishers on Saturday at Auto Club Speedway. The driver of the No. 20 Toyota, who started fourth on the leaderboard, leaves the 2.0-mile oval with his second top five and third top 10 finish this year.
Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe took home the fourth and fifth spots.
Rest of the top 10 finishers included Austin Cindric, Brandon Jones, Ryan Preece, Justin Allgaier and Justin Haley.
The first two stages at Auto Club Speedway went clean and green. The first on-track incident occurred on lap 83 when John Hunter Nemechek had a miscommunication and went across the nose of the No. 39 Chevrolet of Ryan Sieg. Nemechek spun into the inside retaining wall separating the track and pit road and was done for the day as a result. Nemechek finished 28th while Sieg continued to finish 11th.
On lap 110, with 40 laps to go, Austin Cindric brought out the yellow flag in turn four. Despite the incident, Cindric continued his way in the No. 22 Discount Tire Ford to finish sixth.
Not long after going green, Brandon Jones brought out the fifth and final yellow flag of the day in turn three. Jones, in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, went on to a seventh-place finish.
The NASCAR XFINITY Series will take a weekend off and return at Texas Motor Speedway on March 30th. The My Bariatric Solutions 300 will take place at 1:00 p.m. ET. live on FS1 and PRN Radio.
About Me: Brett has been following the sport of NASCAR since the beginning of the 2006 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Since Brett was 13, he has had a passion of chasing a job in sports that not many get the opportunity of doing. He has been in the NASCAR media since the middle of the 2010 season. Since then, he has been a part of many racing podcast shows to improve his talents. He has written for racingonfuel.com and theracingwheel.com. Currently, Brett writes for motorsportsnat.com and TracksideChatter.com. You can find him on twitter @NASCAR_Brett.
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