DOVER, Del. – Carson Kvapil was less than two laps away from earning career win No. 1 in the Xfinity Series in just career start No. 2 at Dover Motor Speedway.
Nevertheless, the field knew he was there on Saturday (April 27).
Kvapil had taken the lead with just 8 laps to go on a bold three-wide move underneath ex-teammates Austin Hill and Sheldon Creed, who had battled ahead of him for several laps prior.
“You don’t want to put [them] three-wide, right?” Kvapil told Frontstretch after the race. “But I feel like that was my only opportunity to get clean air for the lead. So I felt like I kind of had to do it, and I had such a good run.”
As the field piled up behind them to bring out another caution and force the race into overtime, Kvapil chose the outside on the ensuing restart. Hill restarted under him, but couldn’t hold his car underneath Kvapil’s No. 88 in turns 1 and 2 and ended up spinning out.
That forced another overtime restart, where Kvapil again chose the outside, this time with Ryan Truex underneath him. Truex was able to pull even with Kvapil down the backstretch, and sent his car into turn 3 well enough to take the lead outright off of turn 4.
As Truex and Kvapil took the white, Justin Allgaier, Kvapil’s JR Motorsports teammate, cut a tire and hit the outside wall off of turn 4. A caution was quickly called – as it was already the final lap, the race was over, leaving Kvapil no chance to try to get the win back. He would have to settle for a still-impressive second.
As Truex celebrated winning back-to-back Xfinity races at Dover, Kvapil quietly pulled into pit lane. A runner-up finish looks good on the stat sheet, no question. But it could have been so much more for the second-generation driver.
“I’m happy, but at the same time I’m pretty bummed out,” said Kvapil.
His father Travis Kvapil had similar thoughts, but was really pleased with the positives that came out of his son’s career run.
“At the end of the day, he finished second, contending for the win, [to] come from [starting] 26th,” the elder Kvapil told Frontstretch. “All things considered, it’s a pretty amazing day.”
Carson started 26th after a poor qualifying effort, despite showing speed in practice. While he didn’t earn any stage points (not that it matters for him as a part-timer), he was a mainstay in the top 10 after the rain hit with around 40 laps to go.
He ended up leading 14…
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