William Sawalich and Corey Day collided for the second consecutive week in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, and this time, it was Day who wound up on the worst end of it.
One week after getting together at Darlington Raceway, Day washed up into Sawalich’s left-side door in Turn 1 on Lap 134 of Saturday’s event at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, after being pushed from behind by Justin Allgaier.
MORE: Unofficial results | At-track photos
Still frustrated by last week’s run-in that put Sawalich out of the race, Sawalich expressed his displeasure with Day down the backstretch at Gateway by swinging left into Day’s right-side door, sending the No. 17 Chevrolet for a slide and a hard hit into the inside SAFER barrier at the 1.25-mile track. Allgaier, the series points leader, also incurred right-front damage in the incident. Day, who entered Saturday fifth in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, was credited with a 33rd-place finish.
“I got down in there beside him, and I went to go to the bottom, but the 7 (Allgaier) had me pushed up into him,” Day said after he was evaluated and released from the infield care center. “I couldn’t really do anything. Like I had nowhere to go. I don’t really want to talk about it much. It took care of itself.”
Day fell three spots in The Chase standings to eighth place exiting Gateway, 69 points behind series leader Sheldon Creed with seven races remaining in the O’Reilly Series season.
“It’s tough. Really tough,” Day said. “It’s going to take us winning maybe three times now to have a shot at this in the next seven races. So just really unfortunate that it ended the way that it did. We had a top-five car, like I said, and had another really good points day going.”
The crash comes after an incident at Darlington where, on Lap 68, Day contacted Sawalich’s back bumper down the backstretch, got Sawalich’s No. 18 Toyota squirrelly and led Sawalich back into the wall before spinning again off Day’s front bumper. Sawalich finished 30th in the Sept. 5 race, unable to continue due to the damage and leading to a post-race discussion. Sawalich barely missed The Chase in the regular-season finale.
Sawalich opted not to opine much on their latest incident after the race. When pressed for comment by The CW, Sawalich simply said: “I’m just worried about next week at Bristol (Motor Speedway) and what I have to do for my team.”
WATCH: Day: ‘It’s like talking to a wall’ | Sawalich on incident
As a result of the damage, Allgaier was later forced to pit and ultimately left with a 13th-place finish. The driver of the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet fell to second in points, trailing new points leader Creed by three markers. This marks the first time since the Feb. 28 race at Circuit of The Americas that Allgaier has not led the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings in 2026. After the race, Allgaier sought out Jeff Meendering, crew chief of Sawalich’s No. 18 Toyota, for a discussion sat on pit wall.
As a champion and veteran of the sport, Allgaier was later asked if Day and Sawalich needed to talk out their current feud.
“I don’t know the right answer,” Allgaier said. “I feel like that one’s probably a long way from being solved — not from my end. I’m just saying those two together. And they’re both young guys. They’re both going to be around the sport for a long time and they both want to get to the top level. Obviously, I don’t know what started last week, so it’s hard to know what they’ve already had conversation of and whatnot. That’s why I went to Meendering, right? It’s one thing for those two to have a problem on the race track, but when it starts affecting other people that are in The Chase, I think that’s where it’s really difficult. […]
“Those are things that I think that this sport — while we love the gloves-off side of our sport and we love that everybody has aggression, I don’t know. If it’s just two of you and you want to wreck each other, go for it. But there’s a lot more people on the race track. We’ll just have to manage it.”
Sawalich and Day have been involved in multiple incidents this year, including the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway and at Circuit of The Americas in February.
Contributing: Dustin Albino and Cameron Richardson