Chase Briscoe was able to capture the checkered flag Saturday night in the Kansas Lottery 300 at Kansas Speedway. This victory marks his ninth win of the season and locks him into the Championship Four.
“Super happy to be locked into Phoenix. It’s going to be a lot less stressful the next two weeks; so that will be nice. Big thanks to Stewart-Haas Racing, this Ford Performance Mustang was lights out. This was the car we had at Vegas,” Briscoe said in his post-race interview with NBC Sports.
When asked about what advantage this gives him heading into Texas and Martinsville, Briscoe said, “I’m glad after the chaos at the beginning of the race a lot of guys are going to be in scary points situations so I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that.”
This event marked the first race of the Round of Eight for the NASCAR Xfinity Series; the drivers still in contention for the championship include: Chase Briscoe, Austin Cindric, Justin Allgaier, Noah Gragson, Justin Haley, Brandon Jones, Ross Chastain, and Ryan Sieg.
Last week’s winner, Noah Gragson, started on pole with Cindric starting alongside in second and Daniel Hemric in third.
The first caution came on lap 10 when the No. 5 of Matt Mills spun in turn two.
On the restart, an aggressive four-wide move by Brandon Jones bunched up the leaders and caused the No. 9 of Gragson to get into Cindric, causing heavy damage to both cars. Chase Briscoe barely made it through the chaos in front of him. Cindric was able to return to the race, but Gragson had to retire early.
On lap 26, NASCAR threw the competition caution to give teams the opportunity to evaluate tire wear and perform routine pit stops.
Lap 33 brought trouble to Daniel Hemric when he had a tire go down running eighth. He was able to make it to pit road and the race stayed green.
Briscoe was able to maintain his one second gap to Brandon Jones as he won the first stage and picked up another valuable playoff point.
Stage One:
- Chase Briscoe
- Brandon Jones
- Harrison Burton
- Anthony Alfredo
- Ross Chastain
- Riley Herbst
- Justin Allgaier
- Ryan Sieg
- Brandon Brown
- Justin Haley
When the field returned to green, they couldn’t make it back around to the start/finish line as Joe Graf Jr. drove into the back bumper of Jeffery Earnhardt, spinning Earnhardt around in turn four.
Chase Briscoe once again held off Brandon Jones to pick up another playoff point as he swept the first two stages for the third time in the last four races.
Stage Two:
- Chase Briscoe
- Brandon Jones
- Anthony Alfredo
- Harrison Burton
- Ross Chastain
- Riley Herbst
- Justin Allgaier
- Ryan Sieg
- Brett Moffitt
- Austin Hill
The final stage was relatively calm until lap 155 when Josh Reaume had a mechanical problem that sent him wrecking on the apron in turn four. This caution came out in the middle of a green flag pit cycle and gave Ryan Sieg the advantage of being able to take fresh tires under this yellow.
Harrison Burton was the cause of the eighth caution as he spun off of turn two in an effort to avoid contact with Chastain and Alfredo after they had an incident in front of him. His car was unscathed and he was able to continue the race.
With 28 laps to go, Justin Allgaier got loose on the apron in turn one sliding up the track into Anthony Alfredo, sending Alfredo hard into the outside wall and eventually on his roof. The red flag was displayed while they cleaned up the wreck, Alfredo was able to walk away under his own power.
The last caution came out with nine laps to go after an incident involving Myatt Snider while Briscoe was extending his lead.
At the end of the night it was Chase Briscoe who lead 159 laps en route to his domination of the Kansas Lottery 300
Results:
- Chase Briscoe
- Daniel Hemric
- Ryan Sieg
- Justin Haley
- Austin Hill
- Josh Williams
- Brett Moffitt
- Michael Annett
- Brandon Jones
- Ross Chastain
Next week, NASCAR heads to Fort Worth, Texas to race at the Texas Motor Speedway. You can catch all the action in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 on October 24 at 4:30pm EST on NBCSN.
