Carson Kvapil led the last 22 laps around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval on Saturday and beat Justin Allgaier by 0.643 seconds to win the Pennzoil 250 presented by Take 5 Oil Change. It was the first victory of his career in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, and it took a record off him.
He came into the weekend tied with Ryan Sieg for the most runner-up finishes without a win in the history of the series. Both had five. Sieg needed 421 starts to get there. Kvapil had done it in 63.
His team took the other three spots on the leaderboard. Allgaier finished second in the No. 7, Ross Chastain third in the No. 9 and Chase Elliott fourth in the No. 88, all of them JR Motorsports cars, giving the organization a 1-2-3-4 finish. Chastain and Elliott are full-time Cup Series drivers running this series part-time, and neither is eligible for points in it. The fifth JR Motorsports entry, Sammy Smith's No. 8, came home 19th.
The sweep also closed out a record. NASCAR's preview material for the weekend had JR Motorsports at 78 consecutive races with at least one of its cars finishing in the top 10, one short of the all-time mark of 79 set between May 2008 and July 2010 by the team now known as Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. Saturday made 79.
Kvapil started second and spent most of the afternoon not leading. Sheldon Creed led the first 23 laps from the pole. Jeremy Clements, driving for his own Jeremy Clements Racing, took over on lap 24 and won the opening stage, then faded to 37th, three laps down. Chastain led 31 laps across three separate stints, more than anyone in the race. Rajah Caruth led six and won the second stage. Kvapil appears in the lap chart exactly twice: lap 33, and then laps 79 through 100.
It was a clean race by the standards of the place. Three cautions for 13 laps, two of them the scheduled stage breaks, and one on-track incident, Garrett Smithley spinning in turn two on lap 55.
Elliott ran fourth from the back of the field. He was dropped to the rear before the green flag for unapproved adjustments.
Allgaier still leads the standings with 1,016 points and six wins, the most of anyone this season. Kvapil's win moved him from fifth to second, 682 points to 751, which leaves him 265 behind.
NASCAR's clinch board going into the weekend listed what each contender needed to lock up a berth in the Chase, the series' playoff. Kvapil needed 27 points and gained 69, so he is in. Creed needed 16, gained 40 and finished eighth. Corey Day needed 19, gained 30 and finished seventh. Brandon Jones, Austin Hill and Sammy Smith came in needing 45, 48 and 64. None of the three got there, and all three will carry the question into the races that remain before the field is set.
The series runs next at Iowa Speedway on Aug. 8.
Ryan Sieg, who now owns the runner-up record by himself, finished 17th.