Updated 2:30 a.m. ET
Ross Chastain won Friday night’s Circle K Firecracker 250 at Daytona International Speedway to lead a 1-2 finish for Kaulig Racing.
Chastain finished ahead of his teammates Justin Haley and AJ Allmendinger, but the No. 10 of Allmendinger failed post-race inspection and he was disqualified, dropping him from third to 38th in the finishing order.
It was the first NASCAR victory for the Kaulig team and second Xfinity Series victory for Chastain, who also has a Gander Outdoors Truck Series win this season.
“Oh my gosh, we did it!” Chastain said after climbing out of his car. “I sat here as a kid. I watched these races as a kid every Fourth of July, never could come in the spring because we were growing watermelons. These guys right here gave me a race car that, oh my gosh, could win a race at Daytona!
“I’ll never forget this night.”
Chastain led six times for 49 laps, including the final eight. He is the sixth driver to score a win in 2019.
Christopher Bell, Austin Cindric and Stephen Leicht rounded out the top five.
“I couldn’t sniff their bumper,” Bell said about trying to catch the Kaulig teammates.
Brandon Brown, Jeff Green, Gray Gaulding, Jeremy Clements and Matt Mills completed the first 10 finishers.
The race included a number of multi-car accidents that took out several front-runners including Cole Custer, who was swept up in a crash late in the race that necessitated a red flag for clean-up.
“That was terrible,” Custer said after exiting the infield care center uninjured. “I don’t know. It’s just speedway racing. It sucks. I just have never been good at it, I guess. I always get caught up in the wrecks, so I don’t know.
“I wasn’t able to find the front and just got caught up in it there. By the second I saw daylight it was just the 1 (Michael Annett) car sitting in front of me, so I don’t know. We’ll go to Kentucky and see what we can do.”
It was a 15-car accident that broke out with 14 laps remaining and including Custer and Annett, Noah Gragson and Ryan Sieg were just a couple of the drivers who had been running near the front of the field at one point Friday night to be eliminated.
Pole sitter Tyler Reddick sustained damage on his car earlier in the race after making contact with Chase Briscoe. He was forced to pit with four laps left in the race to make repairs to his battered car and ended up finishing 16th.
Briscoe made hard contact with the inside retaining wall after a long slide. He was uninjured.
“I was honestly having a blast out there,” Briscoe said. “I felt like I could make moves and drive through the field fairly easy and thought we were gonna have a really good night, but just got caught up in somebody else’s mess. That’s part of this place. Every time you come here you know that’s gonna happen and we were just on the bad end of it tonight.”
The start of the race was delayed more than three hours by rain.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series now heads to Kentucky Speedway next Friday night.
