By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Joe Gibbs Racing entered Friday night’s Winn-Dixie 250 Powered by Coca-Cola with three drivers tightly sandwiched around the Chase cut line.
After the smoke cleared at Daytona International Speedway, only one of the three—Taylor Gray—survived the battle for the final berths in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series postseason.
After a deft maneuver through a five-car wreck on Lap 44, Gray finished 26th and claimed one of the last two spots in the Chase. Pole winner Rajah Caruth also advanced after erasing a 15-point deficit to the cutoff with a second-place finish in Stage 1, a win in Stage 2 and an overall result of 32nd.
Caruth was running second on Lap 97 when he spun off the bumper of JR Motorsports teammate Justin Allgaier, as Allgaier was attempting to push him. Despite the disappointing finish, Caruth’s 19 stage points propelled him past JGR teammates William Sawalich and Brent Crews, by five and six points, respectively.
“I don’t think he did it on purpose,” Caruth said of Allgaier’s push. “In the moment, I’m pretty bummed about the end of the race. I thought we were in a great spot. But we’ll have a new chapter tomorrow and get to work.”
Caruth’s spin and hard contact sent the race to overtime and gave Ryan Sieg a chance to win for the first time in 424 series starts.
A Lap 27 wreck that ended Stage 1 prematurely left three Chase contenders with varying degrees of damage.
Crews, a rookie who came to Daytona one point above the Chase cut line, took his No. 19 Toyota to the garage with heavy damage, his chances of advancing to the postseason dashed. He returned to the track 31 laps down after a radiator change and finished 35th.
Sam Mayer and Sawalich both recovered from the contact their cars suffered during the wreck, but in Sawalich’s case, the relief was short-lived. On Lap 44, in a multicar wreck triggered by a nudge from Anthony Alfredo’s Chevrolet into the Camaro of Corey Day, Sawalich’s car was eliminated.
So were his championship aspirations.
“We worked really hard after Chicagoland to make up our points deficit,” said Sawalich, who finished 37th. “We worked really hard in the simulator and everywhere we could. We just got taken out. It really sucks.”
Mayer had enough of a buffer entering the race to claim the 10th position in the Chase. After riding in the back for the third stage, Gray finished 11th in the regular season, three points ahead of Caruth in 12th.
“We’ve had a lot of speed this year, and it’s shame on me being in this position going to Daytona,” Gray said. “I feel like there’s a lot of great race tracks for us here in the postseason that we can excel at.”
Crews, who turned 18 on March 30, missed four of the first seven races because of age limitations but fell only six points short of advancing.
“It was definitely frustrating, but ultimately, I put ourselves in that position when I coughed up 20 points at Iowa,” said Crews, who finished 16th in the previous O’Reilly Series race. “It goes back to all the ‘ifs’ and ‘whats’ and ‘buts,’ but I know it happened for a reason…
“I’m grateful for the opportunity. JGR has done such a good job with these race cars, and we’ll just go out there and finish out the year strong.”
