Updated: 7:40 p.m. ET
Austin Cindric captured his first NASCAR Xfinity Series win when he outdueled AJ Allmendinger to the checkered in flag in Saturday’s Zippo 200 at Watkins Glen International.
Cindric used fresher tires to chase down Allmendinger in the final laps. He got by Allmendinger in Turn 5 on Lap 81 and then Allmendinger fought back with the bumper in Turn 6 to retake the lead. Cindric came right back to take the top spot coming to the white flag and then held off Allmendinger by 1.2-seconds for the victory.
“First of all, AJ is a hell of a race car driver, so I knew it wasn’t gonna be easy even if we got there with way newer tires,” Cindric said. “I’m just so blessed and appreciative of this kind of an opportunity at this stage racing these types of race cars and I hope this is the first of many.”
The open path for Cindric to ultimately pass Allmendinger came after the final restart on Lap 73 when he was able to get by a number of cars in Turn 2 when Christopher Bell and Justin Allgaier got together.
“That was nuts,” Cindric said. “I didn’t know how that was gonna work out, but sometimes the path clears and you’ve got to take advantage of it and we executed all day today.”
But after the race, Almendinger’s runner-up finish did not stand when his No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet was found to be too low on both the right-rear and left-rear corners in post-race inspection. This is the second time this season that Allmendinger was disqualified following inspection.
See Also: Kaulig Racing No. 10 DQ’d
Bell, Allgaier, Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick rounded out the top five.
“I just got lucky,” Bell said about his save on the final restart. “For whatever reason it decided to come back around instead of turning into the fence so that was really good. We had a really good Rheem Supra. It was really fast and obviously with Kyle (Busch) being as good as he was, we knew our package was really good here so it was just a matter of me figuring it out. If I could have just been a little bit better, I think we could have got them.”
Chase Briscoe, Cole Custer, Michael Annett, Noah Gragson and Ryan Preece completed the top 10.
Kyle Busch dominated the first stage from the pole, leading 21 laps. After some stayed out during pit stops after Stage 1, Busch had to restart ninth. He was able to quickly work himself back to the front of the field and was challenging Blaney for the lead when a left-front suspension issue while racing through the inner loop took him out of the race on Lap 35.
