Sheldon Creed‘s hunt for his first NASCAR Xfinity Collection win has been a marketing campaign of disappointments left and proper, from shedding in last-lap scrambles (a number of instances, actually) to getting spun whereas preventing for the result in even having the quickest automobile set again by a qualifying crash and divine intervention. Maybe his most heartbreaking defeat happened Friday night time at Daytona Worldwide Speedway when the distinction between victory and yet one more runner-up end was simply .005.
Creed escaped a pair of wrecks in additional time to restart second alongside Justin Allgaier for the third try. Allgaier initially discovered the early run whereas Creed with Daniel Hemric to maintain tempo earlier than catching the chief on the ultimate lap. He carried his newfound momentum to take the lead alongside the surface in flip three, however Allgaier had sufficient pace coming to the end to beat him by 5 one-thousandths of a second.
It tied with the 2018 Coca-Cola Firecracker 250 at Daytona for the fourth-closest end in Xfinity Collection historical past, trailing the .002 set by the 1996 Sears Auto Heart 250 at Milwaukee and 1998 Touchstone Power 300 at Talladega, in addition to the .0004 within the 2018 PowerShares QQQ 300 at Daytona.
Allgaier notched his second win of 2023 and first at Daytona.
As attribute for Daytona, all 4 non-stage cautions had been for crashes that collected a number of vehicles; a four-car wreck with lower than ten laps remaining was the smallest, whereas lap 43 noticed the most important when twelve vehicles had been taken out on the fronstretch. The final of the day on lap 105 noticed Josh Williams get airbourne on the backstretch after he obtained was the surface wall earlier than being impacted by John Hunter Nemechek. Trevor Bayne and Austin Hill, who mixed to guide 62 laps and Hill gained the primary leg, had been victims of additional time accidents.
Kaz Grala additionally spun coming to the white flag, however was far sufficient from the racing floor that NASCAR didn’t name for a warning.
For the race titled the Wawa 250, sponsor Wawa additionally appeared on 4 vehicles piloted by Natalie Decker, Joe Graf Jr., Brett Moffitt, and J.J. Yeley. All 4 had been concerned the quartet of crashes, with solely Moffitt reaching the end in eighteenth.
Jordan Anderson Racing endured the chaos to position all three vehicles within the high fifteen led by Parker Retzlaff in seventh. The staff’s eponymous proprietor, operating his first NASCAR race since his fiery crash within the Truck Collection at Talladega in 2022, drove Jeb Burton‘s standard #27 whereas Burton was in a #22 automobile wrapped to resemble his father Ward Burton’s 2002 Daytona 500-winning automobile of the identical quantity. Burton drifted into the pit street wall on lap 93, however salvaged a twelfth. Anderson and Josh Berry wrecked coming to the checkered, although Anderson was nonetheless labeled fifteenth.
