(photo courtesy miles elliott)
Austin Dillon took the checkered flag after a wild finish Saturday in the NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Auto Club Speedway.
As Kyle Busch led the field into the final lap, his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry he blew a front left tire and slowed sharply going into Turn 1. As a result of the blown tire Daniel Suarez, Busch’s teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, then took over the lead.
But moments later Suarez’s No. 19 Toyota Camry began running out of fuel and slowed on the back straightaway of the two-mile track Auto Club Speedway.
As all of that unfolded on the back straight, Busch then drove his hobbled car ahead of Suarez to retake the lead momentarily. But Dillon — his No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet Camaro still running with a full head of steam— slipped past Busch on the outside, scraped the Turn 4 wall and stole the victory away from a hobbled KyBu!
“Sometimes things just go your way,” Dillon said. “We kind of stole one today.”
Dillon said he “didn’t think we had a car to do that” and that he “was worried about our fuel” as well.
Busch had dominated the race — he led 133 laps of the scheduled 150 lap race — and hoped to make history by becoming only the second driver to win four consecutive races in Nascar’s XFINITY Series. The only other is driver who accomplished that fete was Sam Ard, who did so in 1983.
Rounding out the top 10 are Darrell Wallace, Jr, Daniel Suarez, Elliott Sadler, Kevin Harvick, Brendan Gaughan, Kyle Larson, Brandon Jones, and Justin Allgaier.
