If you’ve been following along with NASCAR’s top-three series throughout the summer months, you probably know that Mother Nature hasn’t been terribly kind, a trend which continued Saturday at Kansas Speedway.
With a huge weather system threatening Kansas, NASCAR made the decision to end Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event after 93 of 200 laps, naming Noah Gragson the official winner of the Kansas Lottery 300.
Driving for JR Motorsports, Gragson’s victory at the 1.5-mile facility marks his fifth victory of the 2022 season and the 10th of his NASCAR Xfinity Series career, making him the 45th driver to enter the double-digit territory in the series’ win column.
The Las Vegas, Nevada-native was able to power through multiple cars on a green-white-checkered restart to end the race’s second stage, holding the lead over teammate Justin Allgaier and the shortened race’s dominator, Ty Gibbs.
Allgaier would finish the race in second place, marking another top-two sweep for JR Motorsports, while Ty Gibbs would finish in third, despite leading 66 of the race’s 93 contested laps.
After leading the first four laps of the event, polesitter Brandon Jones finished the race from fourth, with Ross Chastain completing the top-five finishers for Big Machine Racing.
AJ Allmendinger was able to stop the bleeding in the regular-season point standings, recording a sixth-place finish, while Josh Berry, Sammy Smith, Sam Mayer, and Brett Moffitt completed the race’s top-10 finishers.
Moffitt, along with Ryan Sieg and Austin Hill, chose to call an audible after a caution was displayed with less than 20 laps remaining in the second stage of the race, staying out on old tires.
After dropping to the tail-end of the lead lap, those three cars would come to pit road ahead of what ended up being a two-lap shootout to the end of the race, in an attempt to gain back the lost track position.
While Moffitt was able to collect a top-10 finish, Austin Hill and Ryan Sieg would come home 12th and 14th, respectively.
Leaving Kansas and heading to the regular-season finale at Bristol, AJ Allmendinger holds a 38-point advantage on Ty Gibbs for the regular-season points lead, while at the bubble things have gotten rather tight.
Sheldon Creed currently sits 13 points behind Ryan Sieg for the final spot in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs, with Landon Cassill and Daniel Hemric sitting 32 and 50 points above the cutline, respectively.
