Carson Kvapil has finished second five times in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series and has never won. That ties Ryan Sieg for the most runner-up finishes without a victory in the history of the series. Sieg needed 421 starts to get there. Kvapil has done it in 63.
Brent Crews is three-for-17 at the same thing. He has been passed for the lead late at Rockingham, Bristol, Nashville and Sonoma this season alone, four races he was leading and did not win.
Both are entered in Saturday's Pennzoil 250, 100 laps around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval, 4 p.m. ET on the CW. Neither is likely to get much help from the track. The series has run 10 races at Indianapolis since 2012, and every winner started inside the top eight. In the nine where qualifying was held, the pole winner finished top four every time and won four of the last eight. Sam Mayer, who took the 2025 pole, is the only driver in Saturday's field who has ever started one of these races from the front.
Kvapil, at least, will be in equipment that wins. He runs the JR Motorsports No. 1 for the rest of the season, and JR Motorsports is having a year the record book has not seen. The team has finished at least one of its five cars inside the top 10 in 78 consecutive races. One more Saturday ties the all-time mark of 79, set between Charlotte in May 2008 and Iowa in July 2010 by the team now called Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. Through 21 races JRM has 13 wins, matching the most any team has had this deep into a season, and 61 top 10s, more than any team ever. Six more wins in the final 13 races would tie Joe Gibbs Racing's single-season record of 19.
The driver responsible for most of that is Justin Allgaier, who is 40 and having the best season of a 525-start career. Six wins are the most of his career and the most of anyone this year. He leads the series in wins, runner-up finishes, top fives, top 10s, stage wins, stage points and average finish. He clinched a Chase berth at Pocono and the No. 1 seed at Atlanta, and his 240-point lead over second is bigger than the gap from second to 14th. He is fourth all-time in starts, sixth in wins, third in seconds, third in top fives and fourth in laps led, and first all-time in top 10s, the only driver inside the all-time top 10 of every one of those categories. He is also the only past Indianapolis winner in Saturday's field, having taken the 2018 race, and he owns the second-most laps led in series history at the Speedway, 106, behind Kyle Busch's 358.
Two more Cup drivers join the JRM lineup Saturday. Chase Elliott takes the No. 88 for his second start of the year, after leading 78 laps and finishing second at Chicagoland; his father Bill won the Brickyard 400 on this oval in 2002. Ross Chastain returns to the No. 9 for his ninth start, with five top 10s in eight tries and a win at Charlotte.
The clinch board is busy behind Allgaier. Sheldon Creed can lock in a Chase spot with 16 points Saturday, Corey Day with 19, Kvapil with 27, Brandon Jones with 45, Austin Hill with 48 and Sammy Smith with 64. Parker Retzlaff can clinch only with help. Positions 11th through 14th are covered by 22 points, and Rajah Caruth, 17 points outside, runs his last race in the Jordan Anderson Racing No. 32 before moving to the JRM No. 88 at Iowa.
There is one more layer of Indianapolis history in the garage this weekend, and it belongs to a team that no longer competes in this series. Kaulig Racing won 27 O'Reilly Series races before shutting the program down, and two of its current Cup drivers own Indianapolis wins in it.
Ty Dillon won here in July 2014, holding off Kyle Busch on the final restart and leading the last 24 laps to a green-white-checkered finish, the first victory of his career.
"Winning there in the (O'Reilly Auto Parts Series) is something that's given me confidence inside the race car for a long time," Dillon said this week. "I beat the best of the best at their peak in that time. So I always look back at that with so much confidence and fond memories."
AJ Allmendinger won the July 2022 race on the Speedway's infield road course, a year after winning his first Cup race on the same layout, leading 42 of 62 laps. It was his third of five series wins that season and one of 18 he owns in the series.
"Then to follow it up the next year by winning the Xfinity (NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series) race was really really something else," Allmendinger said.
Both men will spend Saturday preparing for Sunday's Cup race instead. Which is the shape of the whole afternoon: the drivers who know how to win at Indianapolis are somewhere else, and the ones who need it most have never done it anywhere.