Defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson may have dominated Saturday’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help A Hero 200 at Darlington Raceway, but it was Justin Allgaier who parked his JR Motorsports Chevrolet in Victory Lane.
The Riverton, Illinois-native took advantage of some late-race pit stop troubles by Larson and the No. 88 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet out of the JR Motorsports stable to put him in position to cross under the checkered flag first.
On what ended up being the final restart of Saturday’s event, with 15 laps to go, Allgaier restarted on the outside of the front row, alongside Brandon Jones, and swept around the outside in Turns 1 and 2, taking the lead away and never looking back.
Larson paced the field for a total of 107 laps on Saturday, but when the final pit stop happened, his JR Motorsports crew struggled, dropping him to fifth-place on the restart. The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion was unable to recover, finishing fourth.
“Just losing the spots on pit road and having to restart in the third row,” Larson said. “With a short run at the end as it’s cooling down, the pace just picks up and becomes tougher to pass.”
Brandon Jones, a multi-time NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series winner at Darlington Raceway, managed to hold on for a second-place finish, while NASCAR Cup Series regular Christopher Bell had an up-and-down day, finishing in the third position.
Larson finished fourth, a disappointing result for the driver serving as a fill-in for NASCAR Cup Series teammate Alex Bowman, as he deals with lasting symptoms of vertigo. Carson Kvapil had a strong car all afternoon and finished in fifth-place.
RACE RESULTS: NOAPS Sport Clips VFW Help A Hero 200 at Darlington
Corey Day rattled off his fifth top-10 result in six races this season with a sixth-place finish at Darlington Raceway, while Sheldon Creed was seventh. Parker Retzlaff continued to impress in his first season with Viking Motorsports, finishing eighth after running as high as fifth throughout the afternoon.
Sammy Smith and Sam Mayer rounded out the top-10.
Ross Chastain, in his first scheduled event driving the No. 9 for JR Motorsports, finished a solid 13th-place, after getting turned around on pit road by Anthony Alfredo, and losing tons of track position as the team was forced to do a topsy-turvy pit stop.
Austin Hill, who entered Saturday’s event sitting third in NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series point standings, had a dismal afternoon in Darlington, after hitting the wall, cutting a tire, and, much later in the race, getting involved in a crash with Kyle Sieg, Alex Labbe, and Lavar Scott.
Next, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series heads to Martinsville Speedway for its first of two scheduled events at the half-mile paperclip. The event will take place on Saturday, March 28 at 3:30 PM ET on The CW, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).
