Sheldon Creed Wins at Bristol
Sheldon Creed put on fresh tires and drove through the chaos of the leaders bouncing off each other to win Friday's Food City 300 for the NASCAR O’Reilly Series at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The driver of the No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet started on the inside and got the jump on William Sawalich on a green-white-checkered restart to score his third win of the season. The California racer famously had 15 runner-up finishes before his breakthrough win earlier this season at Atlanta. It included a pair of second-place finishes in the previous two Food City 300s.
This win seemed unlikely for much of the night before the race turned aggressive, which allowed Creed to take full advantage. The final two laps were the only ones he led.
“It was a great call to pit tires on and a great pit stop by my crew,” Creed said. “The restart, I tried to climb the 18. Being on much fresher tires, I was able to get going there. I thought we were going to have to take one of the chin tonight, but it worked out for us.”
Creed started on the front row, fell back, but stormed back through the field with the 100 laps fresher tires than the cars in front of him. He has been red-hot at the start of the O’Reilly’s version of the Chase for the Championship. He won at Darlington and finished second at Gateway.
Sawalich, driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, looked in prime position to score his own unlikely win before the late caution flag for Ryan Sieg’s crash. Even though Sawalich was on the preferred outside groove for the restart, he couldn’t get his car going fast enough.
“The old tires weren’t as good as the new ones,” Sawalich said. “We lost it on the restart and couldn’t make it up.”
Brent Crews, a teammate to Sawalich in the No. 19 Toyota, also had his crew’s decision to put on new tires pay off. He finished right behind Sawalich in third.
For much of the race, it was a battle between Justin Allgaier and others. He lost the lead when an aggressive move by defending series champion Jesse Love put his No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet into the outside wall. He was able to still finish fourth, but not happy about it.
“I was questioning why,” Allgaier said. “I’m disappointed coming out here fourth. Thought we had raced clean all night. We just had such a good race car all night.”
Corey Day finished fifth in the No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Taylor Gray finished sixth in another JGR Toyota. Sam Mayer and Parker Retzlaff in Chevrolets were seventh and eighth, respectively.
Dean Thompson in a Toyota and Sammy Smith in a Chevrolet rounded out the top 10. Carson Kvapil led a race high 156 laps before having to pit with brake trouble. He finished 24th, four laps down.
Qualifying was canceled with lightning in the area. Love, the winner the previous week at St. Louis, started the race on the pole.
He led the first 81 laps before Allgaier worked his way through traffic to win stage 1. Love got trapped behind the slower cars and finished fourth, also behind Carson Kvapil and Crews.
Kvapil dominated the second stage as Allgaier got by Love for the runner-up spot.
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