Saturday's motors: John Hunter Nemechek dominates Xfinity race at Kansas
Kansas City, Kan. — John Hunter Nemechek dominated the Xfinity Series race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday, denying second-place finisher Brandon Jones the win that would have gotten him into the playoffs and allowing Parker Kligerman to slide into the final spot.
Sheldon Creed finished third, Kligerman was fourth and Austin Hill rounded out the top five.
“I don't know if this makes us a favorite or not, but super proud of the whole No. 20 team,” said Nemechek, who led 154 of 200 laps. “All the guys made the right adjustments all day. They brought a really fast hotrod.”
It has been a memorable few days for the 26-year-old Nemechek, who swept the first two stages before taking the checkered flag for the sixth time this season. Earlier in the week, Nemechek was announced as the next full-time driver of the No. 42 in the NASCAR Cup Series, teaming with Erik Jones at Legacy Motor Club.
“It's been an exciting week,” Nemechek said with a smile.
Daniel Hemric clinched his playoff spot on points simply by taking the green flag. Good thing he didn’t need to do anything more, either, because his engine began popping early in the race and he finished 80 laps down.
Kligerman began the day worrying about Riley Herbst, who wound up having to deal with damage from an early wreck the rest of the afternoon. The two started one point apart in the standings, which basically meant that unless there was a non-winner in victory lane, whomever finished ahead of the other would get the 12th playoff spot.
Jones could have been that spoiler, but he could never chase down Nemechek over a final green-flag run.
“I was the biggest Nemechek fan at the end,” Kligerman said. “We executed at a high level and that's what I've seen us do the last 12 weeks. I felt if we could just get into the playoffs and bring that forward, we could compete for a championship.”
Kligerman and Herbst were running near each other early in the race. But on a restart, Kligerman dropped backward through the field and Herbst plowed into his rear, sending the No. 98 car to the pits and ultimately two laps down.
Herbst rallied onto the lead lap and quickly climbed into the top 10. But his front right corner was heavily damaged from his earlier wreck, creating some tire rub, and Herbst had to pit again with 72 laps left to effectively end his playoff hopes.
“I honestly felt like we had one of the fastest cars out there. I felt like we were one of the fastest 12 cars all year,” Herbst said. “We just didn't execute on that restart. I don't know what happened. They all got stacked up, or someone missed a gear, but from then on our day was in a big hole.”
NASCAR
Christopher Bell won the pole for the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Kansas Speedway on Sunday, putting himself in good position to wiggle off the playoff bubble and make next week's cutoff a little less stressful.
Bell was the only driver among the 10 in the final round of qualifying to go over 180 mph, turning a lap of 180.276 for a comfortable margin over Kyle Larson, who locked up his place in the next round of the playoffs with a win last week at Darlington.
Bell followed his pole run at Darlington with a mistake during the race and finished 23rd. That left him just one point ahead of Bubba Wallace for 12th place in points with next week's race at Bristol the cutoff for the top 12 drivers to advance.
Larson, who finished second to Denny Hamlin in the spring race at Kansas, will start alongside the No. 20 Toyota on the front row. Fellow playoff contender Martin Truex Jr. qualified third with Chase Elliott, who did not make the playoffs, fourth and Tyler Reddick fifth.
IndyCar
Felix Rosenqvist will end his tenure with Arrow McLaren Racing by starting from the pole in the IndyCar Series season finale at Laguna Seca.
Rosenqvist won his second pole of the season — first since the Texas Motor Speedway oval in March — with a lap at 1 minute, 06.6416 seconds around the freshly paved permanent road course. Rosenqvist won the only two poles of the season for McLaren, which is still seeking its first win of the season from its three-driver lineup headed into Sunday's finale.
Rosenqvist announced earlier this week that he's moving to Meyer Shank Racing next season; McLaren said David Malukas will replace him next year.
Scott McLaughlin of Team Penske qualified second for an all-Chevrolet front row. Christian Lundgaard qualified third for Rahal Letterman Lanigan and his lap at 1:06.4610 in an earlier qualifying round broke the track record set 23 years ago by Helio Castroneves.
Castroneves' lap of 1:07.722 has held for more than two decades but finally undone by a repave of the course that has made the asphalt extremely fast.