The checkered flag is out for one of the wildest NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races we’ve seen in quite a while. This race had everything–big crashes, drama, a dominating driver, devastating mistakes, and a winning strategy. If you watched just the first two stages of this race, you might have thought that it was a foregone conclusion that Brandon Jones was going to win. He led 61 of the first 90 laps of the race and swept both the stages. And just when we thought it was about to slip away with a poor restart at the beginning of the final stage, one that saw Sheldon Creed rocket out front, as the teams closed in on a cycle of green flag pit stops, Brandon Jones was reeling in Creed again. He had the fastest car on the track and, after pit stops, the two drag raced off pit road.
However, a costly mistake, an uncontrolled tire, by Brandon Jones and his crew, cost him this race. He was forced to serve a pass-through penalty in the final run, taking him out of contention. The winning move? Jones’ teammate, Taylor Gray, pitted a couple of laps before the 20 and 00 and inherited the race lead after Jones’ issues. Gray went on to win the race, scoring his second career victory. But it didn’t come easy. On three laps older tires, Sheldon Creed and Justin Allgaier ran down the 54 of Gray. But, in the end, it wasn’t enough. Gray wins!
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