Corey Day goes back-to-back in the O’Reilly Series: Wins at Charlotte

CONCORD, N.C. — Corey Day goes back-to-back in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and wins the Blue Cross NC 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

This is his fourth win of the the season and of his career.

Corey Day gets his first taste of winning on a Sunday before even collecting a NASCAR Cup Series start.

The win also marks the first consecutive win driver for Hendrick Motorsports in the series since Kyle Busch in 2004.

This race was supposed to happen yesterday, but the outer bands of rain from Hurricane Isaias canceled all on-track activities for the series which postponed their race to tonight.

Because of the rain the lineup was set by the metric. Day started from the outside pole and took the lead on the third lap from polesitter Carson Kvapil.

From there he remained in the lead to win the opening stage of the Blue Cross NC 300.

He fell into the backside of the top ten in the second stage and collected an additional three stage points by the end of the second stage.

While he rebounded to run inside the top five, his night looked to level out there, then A few late race cautions led to Day’s chance.

On the final restart, Day boldly passed both Jesse Love and Justin Allgaier on the bottom in turn three and kept the lead for the final ten circuits for his impressive win.

His victory vaulted him two additional spots in the Chase to third. His impressive brace of races saw him start with a deficit of 92 points to the lead. Now, he sits only seven points behind Sheldon Creed with four races remaining.

The Top Ten

Jesse Love led a race-high 80 laps and had the best short-run speed. Even so, he was no match for the late-race heroics of Corey Day.

He moves two points out of leader Sheldon Creed in his bid to defend his O’Reilly Series title from a year ago.

Meanwhile, Creed was in damage limitation mode throughout the final stage. He failed to score a single stage point tonight but found speed when it mattered most to place third and maintain his Chase lead.

Justin Allgaier led 54 laps and won the second stage in his fourth place finish. He too cut his point deficit in half to only 15 points behind Creed entering Phoenix.

In only his second career start, Carson Brown earned his first career top five result. Brown jumped into the Jordan Anderson Racing No. 32 for his first taste of O’Reilly Series action at an intermediate and charged through the field on fresher rubber late for the position.

He will take over Jesse Love’s ride at Richard Childress Racing next season and, if tonight shows anything, it will be a promising relationship.

Chase drivers Brandon Jones and Austin Hill finished in sixth and seventh. Then Anthony Alfredo made it six-straight top ten results in a row for Viking Motorsports from eighth.

Taylor Gray finished ninth. He has finished inside the top ten in every Chase race so far this postseason.

Finally, Brennan Poole dawned the Samantha and Kyle Busch fund paint scheme and willed it to a top ten from tenth.

Notable Results

Parker Retzlaff ran in the back-half of the top ten throughout the race tonight. He failed to hold off drivers on better tires late and crossed the line in 12th.

Then, Sammy Smith rounded out his final Charlotte race for JR Motorsports in 16th.

Sam Mayer had a promising top five run going until a run-in with Jeremey Clements, who also had a good night going, caused him to slip to 24th late.

Finally, it was a rough night for the two other Chase drivers out of JRM. Carson Kvapil had a tire go flat and chased his car into the turn four wall. He was able to continue but the rear-end frame damage resulted in some time spent repairing the car in the garage.

Kvapil finished 29-laps down in 32nd and went from second in the Chase standings to fifth.

Finally, Rajah Caruth’s tough O’Reilly Series Chase continued. He DNF’d in 36th after a tire-rub resulted in a crash with his teammate Jake Finch.

Below is the full results of the Blue Cross NC 300 and the updated Chase standings after the fifth Chase race in the series.

Race Results & Chase Standings