JR Motorsports driver Carson Kvapil exited his No. 1 Chevrolet under his own power after a rollover crash on Lap 2 of Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Kansas Speedway.
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Three-wide with teammates William Byron and Justin Allgaier for second, he and Byron made contact exiting Turn 2 before Kvapil overcorrected and fenced into the outside wall. After additional contact from Parker Retzlaff, the rear end of his car picked up, sending the 22-year-old for a tumble down the backstretch, flipping multiple times before landing on his roof just before Turn 3.
Safety crews quickly rushed to the scene, and the race was red-flagged to turn the mangled Chevrolet back onto all four wheels. Kvapil exited under his own power and was later evaluated and released from the infield care center.
Kvapil told reporters that it was the first time he had flipped in a stock-car race, and that the blowover “was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be.” He took a majority of the blame for the incident.
“I hate to do that, tearing stuff up, and JR Motorsports brings really fast race cars to the race track, and Hendrick Motorsports brings us some really good engines, and to tear ’em up on Lap 2 is kind of senseless, right?” Kvapil said. “I feel like I could have done a little bit better to position myself differently, to not be in that spot. But the biggest thing is, just got aero-free off the left rear when the 88 got to me and went around.”
Driving a full-time schedule across three different entries this season, Kvapil entered Saturday’s Kansas Lottery 300 fifth in points. Primarily, he drives the No. 1 Chevy with championship-winning crew chief Rodney Childers on the box, but he has also made two starts in the team’s No. 9 entry. A four-race slate with DGM Racing completes his 2026 schedule, and he drove the No. 91 Chevrolet earlier in the year at Circuit of The Americas.
Kvapil’s focus shifts to Talladega Superspeedway next Saturday (4 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where he hopes to make up for points left on the table at Phoenix.
“That’s the next thing that kind of sucks is I feel like the points are such a big deal this time around or this season, and I felt like we were kind of clinging on to fifth in points and a couple good races and we were going to be hopefully top three, top four,” he said. “So definitely wasn’t counting this one in on the bingo card, and just got to get through Talladega really clean and hopefully gain some more points.”
Contributing: Zack Albert