RELATED: XFINITY Chase Grid | Race results
FORT WORTH, Texas — Body damage. Pit road penalties. Electrical issues. Take your pick. NASCAR XFINITY Series drivers contending for spots in the Championship Round of the Chase had their share of problems Saturday during the running of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway.
In a race dominated by Sprint Cup Series regulars — they led 175 of the race’s 200 laps — Chase XFINITY Series competitors battled it out among themselves for positioning with one race remaining to set the four-team field for the championship.
Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick finished 1-2-3; Keselowski led 145 circuits, Larson 30.
Among the eight contending for the XFINITY Chase title, Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Erik Jones and Daniel Suarez finished fourth and fifth, while Elliott Sadler (JR Motorsports) was sixth. A bit further back was Justin Allgaier (JRM) in 10th with Darrell Wallace (Roush Fenway Racing) 11th and teammate Ryan Reed 12th.
Blake Koch (Kaulig Racing) finished 14th and Brendan Gaughan (Richard Childress Racing) 15th.
Koch holds the fourth and final transfer spot in spite of his finish, leading Allgaier by a single point.
“That just showed the strength and depth of the new race team and how we’re growing together and getting stronger,” said Koch, whose single-car group had to go to a backup entry following an incident in practice a day earlier.
“To be able to rebound from that … and come out of here with a 14th-place finish, still be in the Chase with one race to go, I’m pretty proud of that.”
MORE: Koch: ‘I’m so proud of my team’
A speeding penalty Saturday on Lap 137 kept his No. 11 Chevrolet stuck on the back end of the lead-lap cars but cost him only a handful of spots at the time.
It was, he said, “the second (speeding penalty) of my life.”
“You have to push it hard right now to get everything you can, including on pit road,” Koch said. “You can’t just be cautious all race long. I went a little bit too far.
“I had no idea; we’re in a backup car so maybe our lights weren’t set perfectly. We just took it, had a positive attitude and worked our way back up through there.”
Electrical gremlins struck the No. 19 team of Suarez, the points leader, while running in the top three and just past the halfway point of the race.
“I knew I had a second battery, but you never know how long you are going to be able to go,” said Suarez, twice a winner this season. “We have a lot of blowers and switches in the race car that we need to use, some of them really help me a lot and some of them we don’t use any more. That’s part of racing. Luckily we made it through and we finished fifth.”
Suarez will head to Phoenix International Raceway with the points lead, one point ahead of Sadler.
Reed had damage to his No. 16 Ford practically right off the bat as the field bottled up on the initial restart. But the driver said he was uncertain how or if the damage affected his car — perhaps a bit less downforce on the front end, “but we were free all day so I don’t know how much that would have helped or hurt us not having the damage.
“It was just a tough day.”
He trails Koch by five points as the series regroups and prepares to head to PIR for next weekend’s next-to-last event.
“You just go out there and lay it all out on the line,” Reed said. “At that point it is your whole season. There is nothing left to lose there. You aren’t points racing at that point per se. You have to go beat those guys by five positions.”