Pit Strategy Pushes Taylor Gray to NASCAR O’Reilly Series victory at Kansas Speedway on Saturday night in the Kansas Lottery 300.
KANSAS CITY, Kan.—The early bird got the victory on Saturday night.
Taylor Gray: Victory at Kansas
The first of the frontrunners to pit during the final 95-lap green-flag run in the Kansas Lottery 300, Taylor Gray grabbed the lead during the cycle and held off charging Sheldon Creed to score the second NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series victory of his career.
Crew chief Jason Ratcliff, who won at Kansas with driver David Green in 2003, called Gray into the pits on lap 143 of 200. Creed and Brandon Jones, running first and second on lap 146, emerged from pit road after stops on lap 147 roughly three seconds behind Gray.
Jones, winner of the first two stages, had to serve a pass-through penalty for a tire violation during his stop, losing the chance to win. But Creed, with Justin Allgaier behind him in third, began a methodical pursuit of Gray that ultimately came up 0.718 seconds short.
“How about Jason Ratcliff?” Gray exclaimed after climbing from his No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. “That pit call was awesome. We had a car capable of winning. I thought the 20 (Jones) was a little better than us before the green-flag cycle started, but we just had to stay locked in, and we had to be a little bit freer.
“Jason made a really good adjustment on the car and a really good pit call and got us in clean air. It’s been a long start to the year, man—not that we’re not bringing speed to the race track. It’s just that things haven’t really gone our way. So it’s nice to finally be able to close one out.”
Dash 4 Cash Bonus for Sheldon Creed
As it turned out, Creed also had plenty of reasons to celebrate. By finishing first among four eligible drivers, he earned a $100,000 Dash 4 Cash bonus for the first time in his career. It was Creed’s fifth attempt to win the Dash 4 Cash prize money.
“It was a great day for us after starting in the back,” said Creed who dropped to the rear of the field at the beginning of the race after his No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet failed pre-race inspection. “I kind of knew right away my car was really fast, and I was able to drive to the front, and I just had a lot of fun today…
“It’s just really cool to be able to bring a hundred grand back to the Haas Factory Team. I definitely wanted to win and add to it, but the 54 (Gray) did a really good job short-pitting us. He ran a really good last 40 laps there a got through traffic quick and made it where I never really got close enough.”
The Kansas Lottery 300 Results
Allgaier came home third, followed by defending series champion Jesse Love and Brent Crews. William Byron, Cole Custer, Jones, Sam Mayer, and Ryan Sieg completed the top ten in a race that featured 11 lead changes among eight drivers.
The NASCAR O’Reilly Series Point Standings
Allgaier finished third in both stages and added one point to his series lead over second-place Creed. The margin is now 131 points. Jesse Love is third in the standings, followed by Corey Day in fourth and Brandon Jones in fifth.
With his victory at Kansas, Gray gained three positions to ninth in the series standings.
The Action at Kansas Speedway
Long before Gray took the checkered flag, there was plenty of action in the first stage.
The race wasn’t two laps old when an accident on the backstretch launched the No.1 JR Motorsports Chevrolet of Carson Kvapil into the air and sent it flipping down the backstretch.
Contact from Byron’s Chevy turned Kvapil’s car sideways near the front of the field. Parker Retzlaff’s piled into Kvapil’s car near the outside wall. The impact sent the rear of Kvapil’s Camaro airborne, and the car barrel-rolled down the backstretch, coming to rest on its roof.
With the use of tethers and a tow truck, safety workers righted the car, and Kvapil climbed out before a mandatory trip to the infield care center.
“Maybe on dirt, I’ve flipped a few of them, but definitely never asphalt racing or a big stock car race,” Kvapil said after being evaluated and released from the care center. “It was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be, once I realized I was going over, but it just sucks.”
On lap 38, Jesse Love crowded Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Hill down toward the apron as the two raced side-by-side in the fourth turn. Hill spun sideways, and as he fought to control his No. 21 Chevrolet, the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of William Sawalich plowed into Hill’s car.
“I’ll remember this,” Hill promised on his radio, referring to racing from his teammate he thought was unnecessarily close.
Hill fell out of the race in 34th place. Corey Day saw his streak of eight straight top tens end with a 12th-place finish after rallying from an accident on lap 101 and a subsequent flat tire.
Up Next
Gray, Creed, Allgaier, and Love qualified for the third Dash 4 Cash race of the season, Saturday’s Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway. The race starts at 4 p.m. ET on CW, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. The 2025 winner was NASCAR Cup Series driver Austin Cindric.