What’s a NASCAR Xfinity Series victory without a little bit of excitement and controversy?
Saturday’s Toyota Care 250 at Richmond Raceway delivered on both of those things in the race’s final quarter-mile, with a last-lap maneuver from Ty Gibbs, on John Hunter Nemechek.
The teammates from Joe Gibbs Racing were engaged in a captivating battle throughout the race’s final stage, with neither Gibbs nor Nemechek able to break away from the other throughout the final 90 laps.
Though, things didn’t start getting insanely heated until the final five laps of the race, when Nemechek caught Gibbs for the race lead, making reasonably quick work of the No. 54.
Gibbs didn’t just lay over and die though and came charging back on Nemechek throughout the race’s final laps, a battle that included lots of door-banging and bumper action, with the lead changing hands three times in the final five laps.
Ultimately, it was a bump from Gibbs to Nemechek exiting turn two on the final lap, that allowed the No. 54 to get alongside the No. 18, which enabled the 19-year-old to make the move that ended up winning him the event.
Gibbs lunged his Monster Energy Supra into the final set of corners on the race’s final lap, making contact with Nemechek, and capturing his third victory of the 2022 season.
“I definitely deserve one back,” Gibbs told Jamie Little in a post-race interview. “We’re racing for wins and they’re hard to come by, so you know, I had to take it. We were just fighting tight all day, just couldn’t hold the bottom, John Hunter [Nemechek] was a little faster and we had a great race.”
“Just got in there deep and had to bump him out of the way up the track,” Gibbs said. “We’re just short track racing, but thank you to Monster Energy, what a great car, this is awesome for Toyota, cool to get our third win, so hopefully we can keep it rolling.”
Nemechek, despite the last-lap contact, recorded his best result of the season, in his first race with Joe Gibbs Racing, finishing second.
“I was fine with getting run into, getting my back bumper beat off, hit in the left rear or whatever, moved out of the way, packing air, that’s just racing, that’s hard racing, short track racing,” Nemechek told FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass. “but when you flat out miss a corner and pretty much drive through someone, I wouldn’t call that racing.”
Sam Mayer recorded a career-best third-place finish, with AJ Allmendinger and Riley Herbst rounding out the top five. Daniel Hemric, Josh Berry, Brandon Brown, Ryan Sieg, and Parker Retzlaff rounded out the top-10.
The event featured a total of three cautions, two of which were for scheduled stage breaks. The other, was a piece of a brake rotor from Noah Gragson’s No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro, which drew the second caution shortly after the start of the stage.
Exiting Richmond, AJ Allmendinger takes the lead in the regular-season point standings after the misfortune for Noah Gragson, leading three-time winner Ty Gibbs by 20 points heading into Martinsville. Gragson, Josh Berry, and Justin Allgaier round out the top-five in points.
