Almirola Rebounds Late For Kansas Xfinity Triumph

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – With a fast long-run car and determination from an earlier incident, Aric Almirola rallied late at Kansas Speedway and passed defending NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Cole Custer to win Saturday’s Kansas Lottery 300.

Despite an unscheduled pit stop for damage in the first half of the final stage, Almirola was able to fight back into contention inside the final 50 laps, ultimately driving inside of Custer to make the race-winning pass off turn four coming to three to go.

He then drove away from Custer by .660 seconds for his sixth career Xfinity Series victory and second of the season.

“I had to be really patient at the end of the race,” said Almirola. “I obviously wasn’t patient earlier in the race. … That was a hard day at the office, though, especially for a guy who’s been sitting on the couch for a lot of the year.

“I knew we had such a great car, and I was able to get by everybody on the long run, but I just pushed too hard there after we had [a broken air gun] on pit road that put us behind,” he continued. “I got in the fence and cut the right rear tire down, so I knew I had to put my head down and go to work after that.

“We got lucky to get the caution when we did, but then we were out of tires, so the fact that it went green there to the end was exactly what we needed. That’s where we were strongest, was on the long runs.”

After scrubbing the outside wall and having to pit for a cut right-rear tire with 74 to go, Almirola caught a break to cycle back onto the same strategy as the frontrunners when the day’s final yellow waved at lap 145 for an errant tire at the end of pit lane.

From there, Almirola used his final fresh set of Goodyear tires and went to work over the 49-lap green flag run that closed the race.

He drove from seventh to third in the first eight laps after the lap-152 restart and then methodically closed down a gap of more than four seconds to contend in the waning moments.

As Custer and race-long dominator Chandler Smith played a cat-and-mouse game for the lead for 25 laps, Almirola got closer and closer to a shot at the victory. Finally, with nine laps left – and just as Custer had wrestled the lead from Smith – Almirola worked his way to second and was ready to pounce.

Stalking Custer for more than seven miles, Almirola finally found an opening when Custer got loose at the exit of turn four while coming off the wall and carrying top speed, breaking pace for a brief moment.

But that was all Almirola needed to edge ahead, lead lap 197, and then clear Custer for good in turns one and two after that.

The victory advanced the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team into the second round of the owner’s championship playoffs, and it also helped Almirola put his long-held Kansas demons to rest.

A NASCAR Cup Series crash at the 1.5-mile oval in 2017 caused a compression fracture of the T5 vertebra in Almirola’s lower back and could have easily ended his driving career.

Instead, Almirola was able to have a much-needed moment in the Sunflower State sun seven years later.

“It’s moments like that one [in 2017] that can either tear you down or build you back up, and we just kept fighting and fighting and fighting,” Almirola noted. “To come back here and finally get a victory instead of having [the crash] be my prevailing memory here … that’s all you can ask for.”

Almirola will drive the No. 20 Toyota GR Supra for the entirety of the playoffs in hopes of delivering JGR its record seventh Xfinity Series owner's title.

Custer finished second and lamented “using our stuff up” after battling Smith for the lead for much of the final 40 laps. He felt he had nothing left to fight with when Almirola made his final charge.

“It killed us,” said Custer, who won the regular season title and at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway a week prior, of his scrap with Smith. “It definitely burned our stuff up trying to get by him. It really made me mad when he put us in the fence on that [final] restart. He is going to pay the [price] for that, though, and I am going to race him how he races me.

“At the end of the day, I just can’t say enough about our team and this car. I think we could have gone back-to-back really easily if things had fallen our way.”

Smith faded 4.588 seconds back at the checkered flag but still finished third, followed by rookie sensation Connor Zilisch, who finished fourth just two weeks removed from a win in his Xfinity Series debut.

Sheldon Creed closed the top five, ahead of polesitter Brandon Jones, Austin Hill, Shane van Gisbergen, Jesse Love, and Riley Herbst.

Herbst’s fight back to 10th was notable, since earlier contact from behind by Hill coming to the end of stage two spun Herbst into a long slide and kept the Stewart-Haas Racing driver from earning any stage points at that juncture of the race.

Almirola won stage one and JR Motorsports driver Sam Mayer captured stage two, though Mayer lost track position immediately after due to a slow pit stop and could never recover.

The Franklin, Wis., young gun and two-time season winner ended up 13th at the finish.

Mayer’s teammate, Justin Allgaier, had a disastrous day after entering the playoff opener at the top seed.

The perennial Xfinity Series title contender spun on the backstretch at lap 70 after contact with Sheldon Creed and nosed hard into the inside wall, causing heavy left-front damage that ended Allgaier’s day.

He was scored 36th and dropped from 27 above the cut line to ninth in the standings – one point below the elimination threshold – leaving Kansas with two races left in the Round of 12.

The NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs continue Saturday, Oct. 5 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with the running of the United Rentals 250, live at 4 p.m. ET on The CW, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.

Love won at the 2.66-mile oval back in April, while A.J. Allmendinger topped the most recent Xfinity Series playoff race at Talladega in 2022.