Polesitter Austin Hill scored a victory in the Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner 300 in a thrilling finish that left questions on who had won. Three drivers all had the lead in the final seconds. It was determined after the race that Hill had in fact won by leading at the moment of caution for a wreck involving Sam Mayer.
Chevrolet dominated much of the race and got the win, but late race events caused only four Chevrolets to finish in the top 10. Hill and JRM took turns leading the race. The victory was the second in a row in the season opener for Hill.
Hill’s race got off to a shaky start. Despite winning the pole, he started the race from the rear of the field after a radio issue forced a pit stop during the pace laps. This caused him to surrender his track position, but he did not stay in the back for long. By lap 12, Hill had brought the 21 car up to third place. By lap 27, Hill had taken the race lead with a pass on Justin Haley.
The running order at the end of stage one, won by Hill, showed a theme that would continue throughout the race. Eight of the top 10 finishers of stage one were Chevrolets. On lap 41 four of the stronger Chevrolets were involved in an incident. Parker Kligerman spun Sheldon Creed into the wall, causing major damage to Creed. The ensuing evasive maneuvers caused Haley and Justin Allgaier to spin, but only minimal damage resulted.
At the end of stage two, won by Allgaier, the first six in the running order were Chevrolets.
Stage three brought a long green flag run, causing a sequence of green flag pit stops. The leading Chevrolets came in together, but Kligerman spun coming to pit road and lost the draft as a result. Josh Berry took the lead from Allgaier during this sequence by out-braking Allgaier into the pits and taking less fuel.
As the pit sequence played out, the pack came back together and formed into a 21-car single-file chess match. With just three laps to go it remained single-file, as Hill held the lead followed by a foursome of JRM cars. Berry was in second followed by Allgaier, Mayer and Brandon Jones. It seemed inevitable that the JRM cars would team up on Hill, likely by hanging back and generating a big run and potentially splitting up so that Hill could not block them all.
Allgaier saw an opportunity to get ahead of Berry with two to go setting off a disastrous chain of events for the JRM squad. Allgaier pulled down below Berry and Jones went with Allgaier. The hole…
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