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  • Cole Custer claims Dash 4 Cash prize, wins the ToyotaCare 250

    Cole Custer claims Dash 4 Cash prize, wins the ToyotaCare 250

    Cole Custer set a dominating pace by leading the most laps and earning his second win of the 2019 season in Friday night’s ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond Raceway in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

    Custer briefly lost the lead to Austin Cindric on a restart with 26 laps remaining, but would not be denied. He reclaimed the lead just seven laps later to win his first career short track race in the Xfinity Series, and also claim the $100,000 Dash 4 Cash prize.

    “We had a great car,” Custer said. “Mike Shiplett made great adjustments as it went. This one means a lot. We hadn’t had a short-track win yet. We’ve struggled a lot at short tracks, but this helps.

    “A lot of my friends give me crap for being bad at this place, but I finally won, so I’ve got a little bit of bragging rights there. I’m just so happy. Two wins—that’s pretty awesome.”

    Cindric was playing the weather game as rain threatened the finish of the race, but wasn’t able to have mother nature on his side. With his runner-up finish, he qualifies himself for the next Dash 4 Cash race at Talladega Superspeedway. His primary sponsor, MoneyLion, will also be sponsoring that race.

    “Congrats to Cole and those guys,” Cindric said. “I tried my best on that restart to hold him off, but they were obviously the class of the field, him and the 7 (Allgaier). We had some fun and got some points and now we will move on to Talladega for the MoneyLion 300.

    “That will be a big one for me. I would love to win that race and the Dash for Cash at Talladega.”

    Justin Allgaier finished third in his JR Motorsports No. 7 Chevrolet. He led 86 laps throughout the night and won the first stage. Similar to Cindric, Allgaier was trying to have pit strategy fall in his favor, but by the time he charged to the front, he ran out of both car and time.

    “The pit call we made at the end of the (second) stage there, it worked out, obviously, in our favor,” said Allgaier. “But I pushed really hard to get back up to the front, and I just didn’t quite have enough there at the end to really do anything.

    “I made a mistake on that restart. It really burns me up that I made the mistake, but all in all, a great day. I hope we got the monkey off our back.”

    Allgaier’s former teammate Tyler Reddick came home fourth with Ryan Sieg rounding out the top five. Zane Smith running in the No. 8 JR Motorsports car is running a limited schedule in the Xfinity Series, but continues to impress many with another strong sixth place finish at Richmond. John Hunter Nemechek, Chase Briscoe, pole sitter Riley Herbst and Justin Haley completed the top 10.

    Elliott Sadler finished in the 12th position at his home track after making the first of his two planned starts for the 2019 season.

    All cars passed post-race tech, so Custer was declared the official winner. Reddick’s car was caught with one lug nut unsecure, so potential fines will be announced next week by the sanctioning body.

  • Dale Earnhardt Jr. Wins XFINITY Race at Richmond

    Dale Earnhardt Jr. Wins XFINITY Race at Richmond

    Dale Earnhardt Jr. dominated and survived a late race wreck to score the victory in the XFINITY race at Richmond.

    The driver of the No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet led 128 of the 149 laps on his way to winning the NASCAR XFINITY Series ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond International Raceway.

    “I didn’t even realize I hadn’t won before,” Earnhardt said of his first win with JRM. “It was a great run for us. Ty (Dillon) was pretty good at the end. He drove into (Turn) 3 pretty deep and I followed him in there.”

    It’s his 24th series win, first since 2010, fourth at Richmond and first at the track since 2002.

    Ty Dillon finished second in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet while Elliott Sadler rounded out the podium in his No. 1 JRM Chevrolet. Daniel Suárez finished fourth in his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

    “I think the day was decent,” Suárez said. “All of these guys work super hard. I felt like having just one practice, 55 minutes, it was the same for everyone but I just felt like it didn’t help us a lot. Our car was good but we needed to work a little bit more on the car to make it better. It was just a little bit difficult in the heat race. Man, it was maybe 35 laps more difficult today but all of the guys never give up on me and I never give up on them and we finished with a decent top-five.”

    Austin Dillon rounded out the top-five in his No. 2 RCR Chevrolet.

    Cole Custer finished sixth in his XFINITY Series debut in his No. 5 JRM Chevrolet as Brendan Gaughan finished seventh in his No. 62 RCR Chevrolet. Blake Koch finished eighth in his No. 11 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet followed by Brad Keselowski who finished ninth in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford.

    “We just didn’t have the speed that we wanted,” Keselowski said. “We tried a little strategy play there at the end but then everybody wrecked and I lost the track position. I tried to get it back but just couldn’t do it.”

    Brennan Poole led three laps on his way to rounding out the top-10 in his No. 48 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet.

    The race lasted one hour, 11 minutes and 37 seconds at an average speed of 93.623 mph. There were four lead changes among four different drivers and two cautions for 20 laps. The last of which involved a 10-car wreck in Turn 2.

    Suárez leaves Richmond as the points leader with a nine-point lead over Sadler.

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