CONCORD, N.C. — After remnants of Hurricane Isaias postponed Saturday’s Blue Cross NC 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway to late Sunday evening, the cream of the O’Reilly crop gave the fans who stayed after the Cup Series race late-night fireworks as Corey Day secured a second consecutive victory.
Jesse Love and Justin Allgaier also contended for victory under the lights at the 1.5-mile oval, but a late restart with 10 laps to go helped Day leapfrog both pilots, with the pair left with second- and fourth-place results, respectively.
Love, driver of the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, said losing the aerodynamic and lane advantages to Day on the final restart made it difficult to regain the lead.
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“Feel like I ran a good race and did a lot of things right, and then made a mistake on the restart and kind of washed up a little bit,” Love said. “Feel like I was still in a fine spot, but without the control of the air in the front and not having any traffic to really navigate, and my car kind of only working in one lane — when he kind of took it away from me, it was pretty hard to put the air (on Day). It is what it is. If I could redo it, I would.”
Day, Love and Allgaier swapped the lead all night, and all three showed the speed to separate themselves from everyone else.
Allgaier, who led 54 laps and won Stage 2, had one of the strongest cars on the long run, but ultimately didn’t have enough time after the final restart to get his No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet going before the checkered flag.
“Just disappointing from my standpoint,” Allgaier said. “We did a lot of really good things tonight. Had a really good car. Great in the long run, and I think that’s what makes that last run so disappointing. That last set of tires just didn’t react the same. I fired off tight and got even tighter, and that wasn’t really the case of what we fought all night.”
During the final stage, Allgaier brushed the wall and surrendered the lead to Love as Day joined the battle.
It didn’t fully hamper Allgaier’s night, but made the No. 7 vulnerable until the finish.
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“The incident with the wall — I mean — it was kind of insult to injury at that point,” Allgaier said. “I already knew we were in trouble. First thing I did was look at the front tires to see if we had any cording or anything like that because I felt like we really abused them there on that last run and just came up short.”
While the coveted win bonus wasn’t in the cards for either Love or Allgaier, they both cut into Sheldon Creed’s points lead with four races to go.
Love sits just two points behind Creed for the championship lead heading to Phoenix Raceway on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), while Allgaier gained 15 points on the No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet driver — an important bounce back for the 2024 O’Reilly champion after wrecking out at Las Vegas Motor Speedway the previous weekend.
Four unique venues await a championship battle that sees four drivers separated by just 15 points.
MORE: O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings | O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule
“Got a good track for us in Phoenix coming up and probably not a great one for a lot of people, so looking forward to that,” Love added. “But at the same time, try to get in the best points position possible because the last couple of races are going to be pretty hectic. Homestead and Martinsville, you’re kind of weighing risk, reward and what you want to do. I feel like I have somewhat of a good enough reputation with most of the guys in the garage to kind of help my case at Martinsville. But we can go in there and get wrecked at Talladega again, get wrecked at Martinsville, so again, just gotta try to be smart, and then go to Homestead with a shot.”
“We got a lot of racing to go,” Allgaier said. “That’s been kind of our motto at the shop is like we were down, but there’s so much racing left to go, and there’s so many places, so many different styles of racing that we still have left. I think everybody’s got strengths. Obviously, Jesse and I had a great battle tonight. I think that everybody in that top four has a shot at it. Even Carson being 40 back. I mean, I was 30 back when the night started, and we’re only 15 back. So one good night can really change the game for everybody. I think we’re all going to go down to the end at Homestead and hopefully do a good job.”