Jesse Love passed Carson Kvapil on lap 165 of 180 Saturday night, held the lead for the last fifteen laps, and won the Nu Way 225 Powered by Bobcat and Sauced by Blues Hog by 0.896 seconds in the No. 2 Whelen Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. It was his first win of 2026 and the fourth of his career.
The race that mattered to the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series championship finished thirty-two laps earlier, and it finished badly for three cars.
On a restart on lap 133, according to the NASCAR Wire Service account of the race, Justin Allgaier moved to the bottom of the track with Taylor Gray pushing him from behind, and moved Corey Day up into the driver's side of William Sawalich's No. 18 Toyota. Sawalich turned left into Day. Day spun into the inside wall hard enough to end his race. NASCAR's caution log lists the backstretch incident as Nos. 17 and 18, Day and Sawalich, and held the caution from lap 135 to lap 139.
Allgaier came out of it with damage to the right front of his Camaro and finished 13th. Sheldon Creed finished second. When the points were posted, Creed had 2,175 and Allgaier had 2,172.
"This is the first time the No. 7 car hasn't been on top of the points in a long time," Allgaier said. "That just fuels this team. If we have things go our way, we'll be right there."
Allgaier has won six races this year. Nobody else in the twelve-driver Chase field has won more than twice. He is second in the standings anyway, and the reason is arithmetic rather than form: the Chase is the series' nine-race playoff, and it opens by wiping out the regular season. Allgaier finished the regular season 229 points clear. The reset cut that to 25. Darlington cut the 25 to seven. Gateway took the seven and three more.
Pit road closed itself
Allgaier's night was complicated well before the restart that finished it.
On lap 49, at the Stage 1 break, the field compressed at the entrance to pit road and a chain-reaction wreck caught ten cars. Day was already stopped in the first stall past the entrance. Behind him, Rajah Caruth's No. 88 turned off the bumper of Nick Sanchez's No. 87, and Sanchez slid toward Brent Crews' No. 19 while Crews' crew was over the wall servicing it. No crew members were hurt.
The wreck blocked pit road and trapped Day's car in its stall. NASCAR red-flagged the race for 7 minutes and 54 seconds to clear it, and the caution ran from lap 47 to lap 53. Sanchez and Harrison Burton, both listed in the incident, did not complete another lap. Brandon Jones and Caruth took significant damage and restarted on lap 54 in the back third of the field.
Allgaier got through it clean, then left his own stall with a loose wheel and had to come back for it, which put him 19th. By the lap 73 caution for debris off Anthony Alfredo's flat tire he was ninth. By the end of Stage 2 he was sixth.
Pit road stayed the problem all night. The infraction sheet lists 18 penalties, eight of them for pitting before pit road was open. One of those eight was against Allgaier's No. 7, on lap 155.
Day and Sawalich, again
Day and Sawalich had tangled at Darlington the week before. Saturday's contact ended Day's race in 33rd and dropped him from fifth in the standings to eighth, 69 points behind Creed.
"I just hate it for my 17 guys," Day said. "It was going to be a minimum top-five day for us. We had a really fast car. It's just really unfortunate."
Asked whether he had anything to say to Sawalich, Day said he did not. "I think he made himself look stupid enough for me (not) to say anything."
Sawalich, who finished 16th, did not address the incident directly. "Just worry about next week," he said.
Hendrick signed Day on Wednesday. His Cup starts will be in someone else's car.
Three days before the race, Day signed a long-term extension with Hendrick Motorsports. It keeps him in the No. 17 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet in this series in 2027 and adds a handful of NASCAR Cup Series starts.
None of those Cup starts will be in a Hendrick car. Team president Jeff Andrews said the current charter agreement leaves Hendrick unable to field a fifth entry, even on a limited basis, so Day will run his Cup races in a Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
"We knew the (learning) curve was going to be steep, but we've been really proud of his progress and the things he's accomplished on track and who he's become off-track and part of our team and our culture," Andrews said.
Day is 20, from Clovis, California, and grew up on dirt. He won at Talladega in April and at Dover in May, his first two wins in his first full season in the series.
The race
Kvapil started from the pole, led 105 laps, won the first stage and finished fifth. Nobody led more.
Love led 70 laps across four separate turns at the front and won the second stage. There were eight lead changes among four drivers and seven cautions for 37 laps.
The track is in Madison, Illinois. NASCAR's own schedule lists the race under St. Louis.
"Eventually, one of these opportunities was going to be there, and I'm going to frickin' take it like the way we frickin' did tonight," Love said after climbing out of the car. "Man, I love St. Louis. I got my first national midget win across the street with Chad Boat."
Sam Mayer finished third and Gray fourth. Parker Retzlaff, Crews, Sammy Smith, Kyle Sieg and Jeb Burton completed the top ten.
Where the Chase stands
Creed leads on 2,175. Allgaier is three back, Kvapil nine, Love sixteen. The next two are a long way back: Mayer and Austin Hill are tied on 2,114, sixty-one points behind. Hill finished 29th, a lap down.
The series runs at Bristol Motor Speedway on Friday.
Allgaier has six wins this season. Creed has two. Creed has the points lead.