UPDATE – Saturday, July 16th at 7:07pm / ET:
Justin Allgaier has passed post-race technical inspection and will keep the victory for Saturday’s Crayon 200 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. However, two of the race’s top-five finishers weren’t so lucky.
Landon Cassill and Noah Gragson – the third and fourth-place finishers in Saturday’s event — have been disqualified by NASCAR after failing post-race inspection. Cassill’s No. 10 Chevrolet Camaro was too low in the rear, while Gragson’s No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro was too low in the front.
Justin Allgaier and Trevor Bayne finished in the top-two positions. Brandon Brown ties his best non-superspeedway finish in the NASCAR Xfinity Series with a third-place finish.
Jeremy Clements secured his fifth career top-five finish in the NASCAR Xfinity Series with a fourth-place result and Sheldon Creed earns his first career top-five in fifth place.
Ty Dillon finished in sixth, with Atlanta winner Austin Hill finishing in seventh. Kyle Weatherman gets promoted to eighth place, tying a career-best. Mason Masey secured his second top-10 result of the year in ninth, with Bayley Currey picking up his second career top-10 in 10th.
David Starr, Joe Graf Jr., CJ McLaughlin, Brett Moffitt and Sam Mayer rounded out the top-15.
One of the biggest talking points in the NASCAR Xfinity Series this season has been the total dominance of JR Motorsports, which has netted multiple victories for Noah Gragson, Josh Berry, and Justin Allgaier.
Saturday’s Crayon 200 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway netted the same type of result for the four-car operation, although the same dominance didn’t exactly shine through, with other drivers and teams taking the spotlight.
When the checkered flag was displayed, it was Riverton, Illinois’ Justin Allgaier that secured the victory, capturing his third win of the season and the 19th of his NASCAR Xfinity Series career.
Yet, a myriad of things had to occur for Allgaier and JR Motorsports to find themselves celebrating the victory, which snapped a streak of six consecutive wins by Toyota at the 1.058-mile facility.
Despite starting the race from the front row – after polesitter Josh Berry had to drop to the rear of the field for damage repair — Allgaier wasn’t a legitimate player in the outcome of the event until the three-quarter mark, when he took the lead for the first time.
In fact, the race started with an on-track incident for Allgaier, after spinning Julia Landauer into the inside wall on lap 36. Landauer, making her series debut, would finish in last place after being involved in another accident before halfway.
Allgaier’s recovery from the early incident and an ill-handling car throughout the middle portion of the race took most of the event and was aided by multiple contenders finding issues throughout a caution-filled back-half of the event.
Ty Gibbs – who led a race-high 49 laps and looked like a favorite to capture the win — found mechanical issues on his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at the end of the second stage, a repair that would cost the No. 54 team four laps. Gibbs would end up 23rd.
Then, Allgaier’s teammates Josh Berry and William Byron – driving a fifth entry for JR Motorsports — both looked to have enough speed to challenge for the victory. That was before they found issues, as well.
Berry’s issues were two-fold, but both came as a result of contact from Sheldon Creed which sent the JR Motorsports driver spinning in front of the pack, collecting 11 cars in a MASSIVE crash that nearly saw Ryan Sieg somersault his Ford Mustang. The Hendersonville, Tennessee native wasn’t able to return to the race, after a fire broke out on his Tire Pros Chevrolet Camaro.
As for Byron, what looked like a chance at another victory in the NASCAR Xfinity Series went up in smoke with less than 50 to go, due to a blown engine on his No. 88 Chevrolet Camaro.
Throughout the last 50 laps of the event, the battle for the victory came down to Landon Cassill and Justin Allgaier, with the pair trading the lead back and forth multiple times before the driver of the No. 7 steadily secured the top spot with 20 laps to go, extending his lead to nearly four seconds by the end of the event.
Trevor Bayne managed to recover a second-place finish after getting damaged in the 11-car melee in the final stage. Landon Cassill, who led a career-high 17 laps, would finish in third. Noah Gragson would come home a solid fourth-place, after multiple scuffles with Daniel Hemric.
Brandon Brown – who pitted under the race’s final caution for his final set of sticker tires — was able to slice through traffic and get a top-five finish, after running as high as fourth in the final run of the race.
Jeremy Clements, on a similar strategy to Brown, came home in sixth, with Sheldon Creed, Ty Dillon, Austin Hill, and Kyle Weatherman rounding out the top-10.
Weatherman’s 10th-place finish marks the first-ever top-10 result for Jesse Iwuji Motorsports, a first-year team in the NASCAR Xfinity Series owned by Iwuji and former NFL Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith.
Leaving New Hampshire, the gap between the top-three in regular season standings in the NASCAR Xfinity Series has constricted, as AJ Allmendinger holds a 16-point advantage over Justin Allgaier. Ty Gibbs, Noah Gragson, and Josh Berry complete the top five.
Up next for the NASCAR Xfinity Series is next weekend’s event at Pocono Raceway, a reasonably new track for the second-tier series. Defending race winner, Austin Cindric, is not expected to be in the field, as the series runs down to the Playoffs.
