O’Reilly Series: Sammy Smith’s wins Talladega for a sweet sweep of his races

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Sammy Smith sweeps both races he enters at Talladega as he wins in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.

This is his first win of the season as he snaps a 53-race winless streak for his fourth career series victory.

Talladega tends to provide the biggest shakeup regardless of the postseason format. Today, the high-banks were tame.

Only once incident caution occurred which saw no driver crash out of the race. In fact, the lone driver to DNF was Jake Finch from a flat tire.

Besides that JR Motorsports driver, the team as whole had a tremendous day.

Carson Kvapil led a race-high 61 laps and won the opening stage and his other teammate Justin Allgaier won the second stage.

Sammy Smith timed his final run to the line to perfection for his second win in as many days.

Though the last lap surge was not the whole story, Smith contended inside the top ten for much of the race and positioned himself in the right position when it mattered most.

The Top Ten

Carson Kvapil blocked the run on the high lane late and was not able to generate enough of a run to get back around his teammate at the line. He leaves Alabama still under a race behind the Chase leader with two races remaining.

The Chase leader Jesse Love sat on the pole for the race today but had zero help towards the stage endings. He failed to capture any stage points which hurt his cushion to second place in the standings.

Love finished third and the damage could have been worse because Allgaier earned a whopping 51 points in his fourth place finish.

Now the two go to Martinsville as polar opposites. Love has the worst average finish at short track this season, 19.0, compared to Allgaier who is a multi-time winner at the speedway.

Sheldon Creed had a successful rebound weekend with a top five finish from fifth. Without the usual carnage Talladega provides, his good day did not have the heightened significance it usually would.

Corey Day had to start from the rear after an internal water leak was found in his engine during qualifying. Even still, he managed to score the third-most stage points on the day and finish sixth to be within 30 points of the Chase lead.

Blaine Perkins and Dean Thompson each had a solid top ten finish from seventh and eighth to provide a spark to their season-ending relationships with their current organizations.

Chase driver Brandon Jones and Anthony Alfredo closed out the top ten from ninth and tenth.

Notable Results

Five Chase drivers finished outside of the top ten today. Sam Mayer led the group from 13th with Rajah Caruth not too far behind in 17th.

While there were minimal issues throughout the race, the three remaining Chase drivers were involved.

Parker Retzlaff suffered a push gone wrong from his teammate Anthony Alfredo and spun into turn three during the opening stage. He eventually recovered, but the damage from the double flat-rear tires was too much for him to contend afterwards.

He finished 31st and was not the lowest of his direct competitors. In the lone incident caution of the race, Brent Crews, and Chase drivers Austin Hill and Taylor Gray were the primary recipients of damage.

For Gray, he was able to recover to 21st and Hill was looking to recover to nearly the same position until a late flat took him out of the running. Hill finished 35th and leaves a Talladega winless for the first time in years.

Below is the full results and the updated O’Reilly Series Chase standings after the seventh race of the Chase.

Full Results & Chase Standings