NEWTON, Iowa – A Saturday O’Reilly Auto Parts Series melee at Iowa Speedway has created a gripping battle at the Chase cutline with just one regular-season race to go at Daytona International Speedway.
A trio of Joe Gibbs Racing drivers are all separated by one point as William Sawalich and Brent Crews hold the final two spots by a fraction over teammate Taylor Gray.
Just lurking behind them is Rajah Caruth, the JR Motorsports driver who skirted through eight final-stage cautions to bring home a career-best runner-up result as JRM teammate Carson Kvapil secured his second consecutive checkered flag at the Midwest short track.
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Caruth, now just 15 points below the JGR impasse, said his “common sense” prevailed amid the start-stop tempo of the final stage.
“Like those restarts, I just was choosing closest to the front because you never know how it’ll shake out,” Caruth said. “Like you can give up a row to maybe be on the inside and dive-bomb in the corner, but you’ll get loose. I got loose. Other people got loose, so it wasn’t uncommon that that would happen in the race, and that was kind of where I was trying to make the most logical decisions and it worked out for us. I was probably not close enough to get a run at Carson. I’d say that I lost a lot of ground there being top of (Turn) 3 and into Turn 1, and I stayed that distance the whole time.”
Sawalich, Gray and Crews struggled most of the afternoon around Iowa.
They battled on the fringe of the top 10 and the three combined for just eight stage points, with Sawalich being the only one tallying points in both stages.
The No. 18 Toyota driver recovered from a Lap 159 spin, pulling off a third-place result for his third consecutive top-five finish to hold a sliver of an edge above his teammates.
“Those restarts were definitely crazy,” Sawalich said. “The bottom lane prevailed most of the time if you didn’t get yourself in trouble. It was also really easy to pack the air on the guy in front of you and get him in trouble. Poking three-wide was also an option, so you kind of got to do what you got to do, and we had a lot of fortune at the end to get us third.”
Crews had himself a day, getting involved in a handful of incidents — most notably triggering a multicar wreck on the first overtime restart that collected front-runners Justin Allgaier and Ryan Sieg.
MORE: Crash prompts double OT | Allgaier expresses frustration
The No. 19 rookie wheelman ultimately finished 16th, but he already has sights set on the regular-season finale in three weeks.
“Our goal at the end of the day is to just win races,” Crews said. “Ultimately, the air just got too loose under the 39 (Sieg) and had that move work out a ton of times this year, and that’s the first time it’s not. Definitely feel like I kind of learned a valuable lesson there, but continue to move forward. All eyes are on Daytona just to move forward and think how we can have the best day possible there to be able to try to find ourselves in the [Chase].”
Daytona offers a tricky task for the JGR drivers as they’ll likely need to work together for track position, as well as race hard for their own points to lock in a Chase berth.
Meanwhile, Caruth will have the benefit of his JRM teammates and a handful of other Chevrolet drivers already locked into The Chase to get the help he needs to pull off a three vs. one stunner akin to that of Joey Logano’s 2018 championship performance in the “Big Three and me” battle.
“I guess we’ll have a meeting about that or something, but in any racing, the last lap’s the last lap so teammates are kind of out the window,” Sawalich said. “But you know, Brandon’s (Jones) safe in The [Chase], so it’ll be interesting to see what he’s going to do and if he chooses anybody. We don’t really work together too well on speedways anyways so I think we’re just gonna have to do our own thing.”
Said Caruth: “I feel like I’m at my best when I’m aggressive — aggressive like using common sense, not being an idiot. But I feel like I’ve done a good job of that at the speedways this year, and I’m excited to go race (three) weeks from now. There were things I probably needed to do better as well (Saturday), but didn’t make any mistakes and just overall executed to the best that I felt like I could and it worked out.”