(Photo: Blake Ulino | The Podium Finish)
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Noah Gragson survived a three-car battle in the closing laps to win the Sport Clips Haircuts VFW 200 at Darlington Raceway in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. The victory is Gragson’s fourth of the season and the ninth of his career.
“That was wild. It ended up working out for us,” Gragson said after the race. “We’ve had a shot really to win six (races) so far. You take tonight out — we ended up getting the win, but we weren’t the dominant guy at the end.”
Gragson led 65 of the first 68 laps, including at Lap 45 when Stage 1 ended, before rain came in and halted the race for two hours and 37 minutes. He led until Lap 82 when teammate Justin Allgaier passed him to win Stage 2.
On the impending restart, Sheldon Creed took the lead up until a Brandon Jones spin on Lap 129. Gragson led for one lap before Creed took the lead back on Lap 134. Gragson dropped back to third and Kyle Larson, who won his last Xfinity race at Watkins Glen, moved into second.
In the final laps, Creed, Larson and Gragson all raced within a second of each other. Exiting Turn 4 coming to the white flag, Creed got loose and Larson made a move to go side-by-side coming toward the line. Larson inched ahead into Turn 1 and slid up into the wall with Creed. They hit again on corner exit and Gragson made a move for the lead down the backstretch.
“I wanted to give myself a two or three-car length buffer,” Gragson said. “I could see Kyle [Larson] wasn’t going to back down for the win and Sheldon [Creed] was in a must-win scenario. I figured they were both going to get into each other.
“They both killed their momentum off Turn 2 and I made it three-wide on the bottom down the back straightaway and I was committed to doing a slide job on [Creed] and parking it right in front of him.”
Larson bumped Creed again entering Turn 3 and Creed shot into the wall. He rode the wall all the way through the corner and inched ahead of Gragson, but Creed slowed exiting Turn 4 and Gragson won the race to the line.
“I looked in my mirror and I saw a shower of sparks,” Gragson said. “The next thing you know, [Creed] was zipping by me on my right side through three and four and I’m like holy s–t, how’d he get — he must be holding it wide open on the fence… [Creed] had wall glue, he was stuck on the wall. We turned down and was able to have the momentum off the corner.”
Creed, who is 13th in the points standings, was in need of a win to punch his ticket into the playoffs. Although he fell short of that, he cut his deficit to Ryan Sieg from 43 to 16.
“I was just trying to hold on,” Creed told NBC Sports. “I was hoping they were going to get to racing behind me and kind of let me go there, and when Kyle [Larson] got next to me there, my only opportunity was to go and side draft him as hard as I could.
“I felt the right front go down there going down the backstretch and felt my only option was to just pin it against the fence like playing XBOX or something. It worked for a while — I just got stuck in it.
“I wish that would’ve worked. That would’ve been a playoff spot.”
Results
STAGE 1: Noah Gragson, Brandon Jones, Ty Gibbs, Justin Allgaier, Sheldon Creed, Riley Herbst, Austin Hill, Christopher Bell, Kyle Weatherman, Ross Chastain
STAGE 2: Justin Allgaier, Noah Gragson, Christopher Bell, Brandon Jones, Austin Hill, Sheldon Creed, Ty Gibbs, John Hunter Nemechek, Josh Berry
FINAL: Noah Gragson, Sheldon Creed, AJ Allmendinger, Justin Allgaier, Kyle Larson, Ty Gibbs, Christopher Bell, Josh Berry, John Hunter Nemechek, Austin Hill
Next
The Xfinity Series travels to Kansas Speedway on Saturday, September 10 for the Kansas Lottery 300. The race is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET on USA Network. Ty Gibbs is the defending race winner.
