Haley earns 3rd consecutive win on superspeedway
TALLADEGA, Alabama, Oct 4, (AP): Justin Haley stormed into the second round of the Xfinity Series playoffs with a win at Talladega Superspeedway, his third superspeedway victory of the season.
Haley, who in 2019 won the Cup race in July at Daytona, has three career Xfinity Series victories, all this season, all on superspeedways. He won at Talladega in June, Daytona in August and then again Saturday at Talladega.
Haley joined Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr as the only drivers in NASCAR to win three consecutive superspeedway races. The Earnhardt’s did it in the Cup Series.
Haley, in a Chevrolet for Kaulig Racing, joined Chase Briscoe as the only two drivers locked into the second round of the playoffs. Four drivers will be eliminated after next week’s race on The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
The four drivers below the cut-line with one race remaining in the opening round of the Xfinity Series are Michael Annett, Harrison Burton, Brandon
Brown and Riley Herbst. The Xfinity Series will crown a new champion for the first time in three years because back-to-back title winner Tyler Reddick moved to the Cup Series this season.
Briscoe, winner of two consecutive races before Talladega and a seriesbest eight this season, led a race-high 73 laps and was cruising from the final restart with 18 laps remaining. Then he had to block to preserve his spot out front in the closing laps and contact with Noah Gragson nearly caused Briscoe to spin.
He recovered and took control of the bottom lane of traffic, then darted back up to the top in front of Gragson to lead that lane. As Haley surged alongside him on the bottom. Gragson and Briscoe had contact that sent Briscoe into the wall.
A crash on the final lap allowed Haley to win under caution. The
Talladega race had been decided with a last-lap pass in nine of the last 12 races.
Annett finished second and was fol
lowed by Ryan Sieg, Noah Gragson and Brandon Jones. Daniel Hemric, Ross Chastain, Josh Williams, Garrett Smithley and Brown rounded out the top 10.
Briscoe’s goal Saturday had been to help fellow Ford driver Austin Cindric win the race and the two rivals for the championship worked together up until Cindric crashed in the final stage. Cindric was in the middle of a pack of cars when he was caught in some dicey action.
The Talladega race was realigned after the pandemic disrupted NASCAR’s schedule. With next week’s race at Charlotte, the series is at last back on schedule with its original 2020 calendar.
Meanwhile, Raphael Lessard, a 19-year-old Canadian rookie, won his first career NASCAR national series race on Saturday in overtime under caution at Talladega Superspeedway.
Lessard was racing side-by-side with Trevor Bayne on the final lap of the two-lap overtime shootout when a pack of trucks running four wide triggered an accident that froze the field. Lessard won in a Toyota for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the first win of the season for the organization from a driver other than Busch.
Lessard is the fifth foreign-born winner in the Truck Series. The teenager moved from Quebec to North Carolina in January, two months before the coronavirus pandemic upended his first full-time season in an American national series.
The race was the first elimination race of the Truck Series playoffs and Christian Eckes, one of the contenders to race for the championship, was eliminated in a mixed day for Busch’s race team. Lessard got the race win, but there will be no KBM championship this year.
Todd Gilliland was also eliminated because a mechanical failure ended his race early. Gilliland had been aggressive prior to the the mechanical issue in a bid to extend his playoff run.
Bayne, a former Daytona 500 winner who has returned for four Truck Series races so far this season, finished second to Lessard. Chandler Smith was third, Codie Rohrbaugh fourth, and Ben Rhodes completed the top five.