SPEEDWAY, Ind. — William Sawalich led laps, scored stage points in both stages and left Saturday’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with a fifth-place finish.
But even his second-best points day of the year leaves him seven points outside The Chase with just two races remaining in the regular season.
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The driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota impressed all day long, surging to lead two laps and capitalizing on a long run late in Saturday’s 250-mile feature to end his day with 42 points earned. He enters the looming off week 13th in the points standings, one position and seven points out of the provisional Chase field.
“The pressure’s on,” Sawalich said. “We still need some more points, and I wish we could have finished a little better there. We had the speed to, I guess, be top three on a long run, or if we were up there in the mix on the short run, then we could hold on better than the guys on the long run. But it kind of is what it is. We’ve got some work to do in Iowa to really build a safe gap into Daytona, but our Soundgear GR Supra was pretty good today.”
Sawalich was the top finishing entrant in Saturday’s race outside of the JR Motorsports stable, which swept the top four positions. Saturday marked Sawalich’s second straight top-five finish and sixth of the season, but the valleys of the four weeks prior leave him on the outside looking in: 21st at Pocono; 36th at Naval Base Coronado; 13th at Sonoma; and 29th at Chicagoland. That, in part, is what made Saturday’s performance “really critical” at Indianapolis.
“I mean, this is the kind of day we needed,” Sawalich said. “We didn’t need any mistakes. We couldn’t afford it. Pit crew did a really good job on pit road, gaining me spots every time. All the Toyotas kind of just struggled on restarts to get going, so those kind of paid off in the long run.”
Next on the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule is Iowa Speedway on Aug. 8 (5 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Sawalich has found success on similar tracks as recently as this year, earning his first career win at Rockingham Speedway earlier this spring. In his lone Iowa appearance, he qualified second last year but ultimately finished 11th. Trailing JGR teammates Brent Crews and Taylor Gray in the points standings — with Rajah Caruth directly on his tail — Sawalich knows 11th may not cut it at Iowa.
“We’re pretty good at short tracks. We’ve got our package a lot better,” Sawalich said. “I think we know what to do while we’re there. Obviously, we need to maximize the stage points and get a good finish. Then we need to build a big gap there to be safe in Daytona because you never know what could happen.”