It was a clutch performance for the 23-year-old North Carolinian who won the pole position and led the most laps on the day – 121 of 250 – in the No. 1 JR Motorsports Chevrolet to keep himself very much in the championship conversation heading to Homestead-Miami Speedway next week for the season finale.
Ultimately, Kvapil had to hold off his JRM teammate, Justin Allgaier, for the win, taking the trophy by 0.434 seconds over Allgaier, who leaves Virginia the new championship leader by 22 points over Richard Childress Racing’s Jesse Love.
Allgaier leads Love by 22 points, with Day 23 points back and Kvapil now 31 points out. Haas Factory Team driver Sheldon Creed finished sixth at Martinsville — good enough to keep him in the championship mix. He’s ranked fifth, 42 points behind Allgaier.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Martinsville
“It’s awesome, I knew in practice we had a very fast Chevrolet,”’ said Kvapil, who earned his and crew chief Rodney Childers’, first Martinsville win. “Able to qualify on pole but just kinda had a rough race between the end of Stage 1 and the end of the race there; just kept getting shuffled back.
“But it just really worked out. Just super excited. Winning is always great, but finally getting one at a track I feel like I’m good at is really cool.”
The series’ championship leader coming into the race, Richard Childress Racing’s Love had endured a tough night all night. Caught on pit road immediately behind an incident cost him positions mid-race, then a tire rub forced him to limp and persevere through Stage 2, where he finished 22nd and was really forced to play catch-up. Finally, his car suffered brake trouble with 30 laps to go, crashing and bringing out the race’s 12th and final caution. He finished 30th, dropping him from the lead into second place in the championship.
“Nothing really to process; I feel like I’ve got a good idea of where it started to unravel and what did us in and all the bad stuff and good stuff that happened in between along the way,” the reigning O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion Love said.
“I’m not really going to study too much about today, it really doesn’t matter. We have obviously one goal and probably for the most part only one avenue, one way to achieve that goal and it brings me a lot of clarity.
“It means unless the [number] seven (Allgaier) has a DNF at Homestead, we’ve got to go and win the race. Obviously, that’s where we do our best work in moments like that.”
Allgaier, whose 52 laps led Saturday were second only to his teammate Kvapil, is the defending race winner at the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami Speedway where the series goes next weekend to settle the championship.
“I think that last set of tires we had to push really hard to get through the field and those cautions didn’t help us out,” said Allgaier, noting the six cautions and a nearly 12-minute-long red flag in the final 105-lap run.
As for next week, he smiled and said, “I love the fact we have five [cars] going into Homestead with a shot to be champion. It’s going to make for a great battle. I feel like our team does a really great job. We won there last year. We know how to get around the race track and we know we’ll have speed, we just have to execute.
“If we do all the things we’ve been doing and execute the way we know we can, we keep the points lead.”
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Brandon Jones finished fourth, followed by HFT teammates Sam Mayer and Creed. JRM’s Sammy Smith was seventh, with Joe Gibbs Racing’s William Sawalich, Brent Crews and Taylor Gray rounding out the top 10.
The series heads south to Homestead-Miami Speedway next Saturday for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Championship Race (5 p.m. ET, The CW, ESPN Unlimited, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
NOTE: Post-race inspection was completed without issue in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series garage, confirming Carson Kvapil as the winner.