Aric Almirola made a late race pass on Cole Custer with three laps to go and held on to win of the Kansas Lottery 300 at Kansas Speedway Saturday (Sept. 28). Almirola captured his second win of the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, recovering from hitting the wall during the race that forced him down pit road early.
Almirola won his sixth career Xfinity race and collected the eighth win for Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 20 Toyota Supra this season, locking the team into the next round of the owner’s championship. Almirola led just 16 laps.
Custer led 48 laps with his No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford coming alive at the end of the race. Despite getting by JGR driver Chandler Smith for the lead late, Almirola followed him through after catching the two playoff drivers while they battled. Smith would finish third with most laps led today, leading 113.
Connor Zilisch, in his second career start, finished where he started the race in fourth, and Sheldon Creed was the third of three JGR Toyotas in the top five, finishing fifth.
Brandon Jones, Austin Hill, Shane van Gisbergen, Jesse Love and Riley Herbst rounded out the top 10.
Smith grabbed the lead early from the polesitter Jones, and a pair of JRM cars had early troubles. Zilisch made a couple of early saves while Sammy Smith made contact with the turn 4 wall after getting loose due to pressure from AJ Allmendinger on lap 4. The contact slowed his car down with damage and ultimately caused the No. 8 Chevrolet to spin by itself for the first caution of the day.
At the end of stage one, Almirola, who passed his JGR teammate Smith during the stage, won the opening stage, and another JGR driver in Taylor Gray had his engine blow up.
During the stage one caution, Allmendinger was dinged with an uncontrolled tire penalty on his pit stop, sending him to the rear, and Jones, who was running top five at the end of the stage, had to come in to tighten up some lug nuts.
After a caution for Brad Perez losing power, Justin Allgaier spun out of turn 2 on a restart running behind Creed, sending his No. 7 Chevrolet to the inside wall on the backstretch nose-first.
Allgaier tried to continue, but he suffered a flat tire on the restart, sending him into the turn 3 wall with no caution. Allgaier would pull behind the wall and finish 36th.
Mayer took the lead away from Almirola and held him off in the closing laps of stage two to take the stage win and bonus playoff point.
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