Are you not entertained?!
In a thrilling late-race battle for the win, 41-year-old Aric Almirola used all of the tools in his veteran’s utility belt to best 19-year-old Connor Zilisch for the race win in Saturday night’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Focused Health 302 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Race Results: Focused Health 302 at Las Vegas
In the closing laps, Almirola saw what had seemed for much of the evening as a sure-fire win become not so sure as he developed a tight condition while fighting for the win on the final restart of the evening.
“Our car was really good, but the longer we ran, the tighter I got. And I was just struggling on that long run at the beginning of Stage 3. And finally, that restart there, I just took off incredibly tight, and I couldn’t get going,” Almirola explained in his post-race interview on The CW. “[Nick Sanchez] kind of slowed my momentum down, and finally I got clear of him and I was able to go chase [Zilisch] down. He looked pretty loose, and I was able to capitalize on that.”
The win marks the third of the season for Almirola, who has competed in 14 races this year. And while Almirola isn’t eligible for the NASCAR Xfinity Series driver’s championship, Saturday night’s win moves Almirola’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team into the Championship 4 for the owner’s title.
“It’s so much fun to be a part of this. Thank you, Coach [Joe Gibbs]. Such an awesome honor to go race for an owner’s championship with J.D. Gibbs’ name on the car, and the whole Gibbs family,” Almirola said. “I’m having so much fun, this is the time of my life, man.”
It was a dominant win for Almirola, who swept Stages 1 and 2, and led a race high 107 laps in the 201-lap event at the 1.5-mile speedway in Sin City.
Zilisch, who struggled with a loose race car throughout the evening, came up just shy of an 11th win of the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season as he crossed the finish line 0.696 seconds behind Almirola. The Rookie of the Year contender, who is running out of space to place win stickers on his No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, was upset to see a shot at another win, one that would have automatically advanced him into the Championship 4, slip through his grasp.
“Yeah, I mean, the frustration just comes from how much — you know, this stuff means a lot to me. And
you know, a chance to lock into Phoenix, you’ve got to take it,” Zilisch explained. “I mean, I gave it my all. I drove it as hard as I could, but yeah, I guess that’s all we had today. I’ve just got to do a better job. I just could not wrap the [inside] line. I sucked here in the spring for the same reason, and we were just really loose and struggled to move around.”
While he failed to officially lock in his spot in the Championship 4, with two races remaining in the Round of 8, Zilisch finds himself very comfortably 82 points above the Playoff cutline.
Justin Allgaier, Zilisch’s JR Motorsports teammate who has served as his main competition for the championship this season, started from the pole and finished the evening in the third spot. Allgaier, like Zilisch, bolstered his championship hopes with a solid outing in the opening race of the Round of 8 of the Playoffs.
Allgaier, the defending series champion, sits 44 points above the cutline heading into a date with Talladega Superspeedway.
Corey Day, a Hendrick Motorsports development driver, impressed mightily with a fourth-place finish on Saturday night, and he crossed the finish line ahead of a guy who made a lot of friends on Saturday night, Nick Sanchez.
Jesse Love, who was the person most upset with Sanchez for how he was raced by the driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet in the closing laps, ended the race with a sixth-place finish, while he was followed by Ryan Sieg, Taylor Gray, Sam Mayer, and Austin Hill, who rounded out the top-10 finishers.
Four NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoff drivers finished outside the top-10 on Saturday night, including Sheldon Creed (finished 11th), Brandon Jones (13th), Carson Kvapil (15th), and Sammy Smith (20th).
Smith, who was sluggish for the majority of the evening, radioed to his team in the opening portion of the race that he believed he had an engine issue. He was able to salvage a 20th-place result despite the potential problems under the hood, but finds himself at the bottom of the Playoff Grid after Saturday night.
Brandon Jones (-8 points), Sheldon Creed (-21), Carson Kvapil (-22), and Smith (-24) are the four drivers who find themselves below the Playoffs cutline after the opening of three races in the Playoffs Round of 8.
Next up for the NASCAR Xfinity Series is the United Rentals 250 at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, October 18. That race will be televised on The CW, and coverage is set to kick off at 4:00 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry the radio broadcast of that race.
