By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service

BRISTOL, TN (September 18, 2026) – Like a stealth bomber, Sheldon Creed waited until the last minute to make his move.

Thanks to an astute call from crew chief Jonathan Toney, Creed had new tires for an overtime restart on Lap 304, and he used them to full advantage in winning Friday night’s Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The victory, Creed’s second in three Chase races, left the driver of the No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet on top of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series postseason standings, 11 points ahead of top-seeded Justin Allgaier in second.

But the result left Allgaier angry after finishing fourth and left Jesse Love disconsolate and apologetic after running Allgaier into the outside wall after a Lap 286 restart.

Benefitting from a caution with three laps left in regulation, Creed lined up in the inside lane beside race leader William Sawalich on Lap 304. Getting an excellent launch on his new tires—after Toney had called him into the pits for fresh rubber on Lap 280—Creed got an excellent launch and seized the lead.

Sawalich moved to the top of the track in an attempt to counter, but Creed prevailed, beating Sawalich to the finish line by 0.253 second at the end of the two-lap overtime. Creed, who picked up his third victory of the season and third of his career, was credited with leading only the final three laps.

“Just a great call by my crew chief and engineer to put tires on,” said Creed, who lined up eighth for the penultimate restart on Lap 286 and quickly advanced to second. “Great pit stop by my guys to get me out first and be the first one on tires.

“To be honest, I wasn’t really good all night with the balance of our Chevrolet. Hats off to these guys. They just never give up. I just think the (overtime) restart there, I tried to time the 18 (Sawalich) well. With a lot newer tires, it was just easier for me to get going. I got clear and I was just kind of watching up top.”

Creed has finished first, second and first in the three Chase races, as the O’Reilly Series faces a week off before resuming in the Focused Health 302 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Oct. 3.

Allgaier was the leader for the Lap 286 restart, but in a bid for the lead, Love ran the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet into the outside wall shortly after the race went green. As soon as the race ended, with Allgaier in fourth and Love a disappointing 17th, Allgaier strode to Love’s No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet to express his dissatisfaction.

“(I was) just questioning why,” said Allgaier, who won the first stage despite creasing the nose of his Camaro during contact with the back bumper of Nick Sanchez’s Chevrolet in heavy traffic. “The race car we had was so good tonight. I’m just disappointed at coming out of here the way we did.”

Love, the defending series champion, was contrite and upset over a decision that cost both him and Allgaier the chance for a victory.

“Honestly, I got caught up in the moment racing with him,” said Love, who is fourth in the Chase standings, 41 points behind Creed. “I knew on the last restart (Lap 286), I had to get a good launch, and I was able to accomplish that. I came off (Turn) 4, we were side-by-side, and I needed to run my best corner, and instead I got caught up with racing him, and in turn that led me down a path to make an enemy I needed not to make.

“I made a terrible decision that took ourselves out of contention to win.”

Rookie Brent Crews ran third, with Corey Day securing the fifth spot. Taylor Gray, Sam Mayer, Parker Retzlaff, Dean Thompson and Sammy Smith completed the top 10.

Carson Kvapil led a race-high 156 laps but pitted with smoke trailing from the back of his No. 1 JR Motorsports Chevy with 44 laps left. Kvapil finished 24th, four laps down, but held the third position in the standings, 37 points behind Creed.

Love led 80 laps before the run-in with Allgaier, who was out front for 49 circuits. The only other drivers to lead laps were Sawalich with 13—interrupted by the Lap 297 caution that changed the course of the race after Ryan Sieg slammed the outside wall in close quarters with Day and Retzlaff—and Creed with three.

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

BRISTOL, TN (September 17, 2026) – For Jake Garcia, it was a case of stealing thunder.

For the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Chase drivers, it was blunder after blunder.

Driving the No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford, Garcia took control in the third stage of Thursday night’s UNOH 250 Presented by Ohio Logistics at Bristol Motor Speedway and went on to win for the first time in his 94th start.

In the Chase opener for the series, Garcia led three times for 104 laps. On Lap 230 of 250, he wrested the lead from Stewart Friesen with an inside pass and held it the rest of the way. Garcia took the checkered flag 1.305 seconds ahead of Bayley Currey, who passed Friesen for the runner-up spot on Lap 247.

“I’m really proud of all my guys,” said Garcia, who started 12th on metrics per the rule book. “They brought an amazing truck tonight. It was good today (in practice), but qualifying got rained out, so we got a good strategy that helped us come from the back, get some track position… and just kind of took off from there.”

Garcia ended a drought for ThorSport dating to Ty Majeski’s victory in the 2024 Championship 4 event at Phoenix Raceway, but it was hardly clear sailing to the finish. Garcia lost the lead to Friesen on a Lap 220 restart and spent the next 10 laps trying to regain it.

“Had some adversity on that last restart, but fortunately the truck was fast enough to overcome that,” Garcia said. “ThorSport Racing’s a really strong team, especially historically, so just proud of all my guys on the 98 team to be able to end that winless streak.”

Currey finished second in his first Truck Series start of the season. With Friesen third, Justin Haley fourth and Tristan McKee fifth—at age 16 the youngest driver in series history to score a top five—no Chase driver finished better than sixth (Giovanni Ruggiero).

“I’ve still got it, I guess,” said Currey, who was driving the No. 5 TRICON Garage Toyota. “Just huge, huge thank you to everyone at TRICON, Toyota – just a great opportunity and glad we were able to make the most of it.

“I thought I was going to fumble it there at the end, but we were able to fight there and bring it home P2. Obviously wanted to win, but coming off the couch, I’m all right with it.”

In fact, the top four seeds in the Chase all experienced uncharacteristic difficulty. Top-seeded Layne Riggs started from the pole and won the first two stages wire-to-wire, leading the first 135 laps.

But Riggs was sixth out of the pits for the start of the final stage, and on Lap 156, he radioed to his crew that his No. 34 Front Row Racing Ford had a loose right rear wheel. Riggs pitted for four tires on Lap 161 but lost two laps to the leaders and never recovered.

After contact with the damaged No. 1 Toyota of Nick Leitz late in the race, Riggs was forced to pit road again and finished 32nd, 16 laps down.

The two stage wins proved to be a godsend for Riggs, who retained the Chase lead by three points over Kaden Honeycutt. The driver of the No. 11 Toyota finished eighth despite an unscheduled pit stop with a loose wheel under caution late in the race.

“There was a lot of fighting tonight,” Riggs said. “I’m just thankful that we had a fast enough truck that we won the first two stages and got some points, but we just came down pit road and had an absolute catastrophe of a stop.

“I don’t understand how we were that slow on the stop, and we didn’t get the wheels tight… I’m very frustrated. I feel like we had the truck to beat again.”

Third-seeded Chandler Smith suffered both a speeding penalty at the Stage 2 break and a tire losing air late in the final run. Smith finished 24th and leaves Bristol third in the standings, 30 points behind Riggs.

The Chevrolet of fourth-seeded Christian Eckes suffered early front-end damage and finished 30th. Eckes dropped four spots to eighth in the Chase standings, 58 points out of the lead.

Behind Ruggiero, William Sawalich, Honeycutt, Majeski and Grant Enfinger completed the top 10.

The Chase resumes for the Truck Series on Sept. 26 in the Race to Stop Suicide 200 at Kansas Speedway (1 p.m. ET on FS1, NRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

By Holly Cain
NASCAR Wire Service

DARLINGTON, S.C. (September 5, 2026) – It took 138 races for Sheldon Creed to finally claim his first career NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series victory at Atlanta this February. On Saturday night he earned his second trophy – and the timing couldn’t be better with the Californian opening the nine-race Chase for the season championship with a visit to Victory Lane in the Fleetio 200 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.

Creed took the lead after his crew delivered a fast pit stop putting his No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet in front of the field for a restart with 49 laps remaining. The 2020 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champ took it from there and held the lead all the way to the checkered flag, crossing the finish line 2.961-seconds ahead of Hendrick Motorsports rookie Corey Day, who also turned in an impressive effort in the Chase opener.

Over his career, Creed has been especially good at the at the famed 1.366-mile Darlington oval known as the track “Too Tough to Tame.” His work Saturday was his seventh top-10 finish in nine Darlington starts. He was runner-up here in 2022 and earned two truck race wins here in 2021.

“I’ve wanted this O’Reilly win here and to finally get that is incredible,’’ Creed, 29, said, acknowledging his team tried a different strategy early in the race that got him close enough to the front to benefit from the clutch pit stop.

“It ended up working out well and was able to get second and the pit crew did a great job getting us out in the lead. Was able to control it from there. Was just praying for no cautions. Very thankful.”

Four of the 12 Chase-eligible drivers finished among the top-five. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Brent Crews was third – although not eligible for the driver’s title, the finish was crucial as Crews’ No. 19 JGR Toyota is running for the owner’s championship.

Chase drivers JR Motorsports’ drivers Sammy Smith and Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Hill were fourth and fifth in their Chevrolets.

Regular season champion, JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier led a race best 60 of the 147 laps and ran among the top-five all night. But his No. 7 Chevrolet hit the wall with 23 laps remaining while he was trying to rally from fourth place. He had to nurse the car home in the closing laps and ultimately finished 17th – snapping a 10-race streak of top-10 finishes at the track.

More importantly, the frustrating finish at a track where he’s won four times, cut his lead atop the championship standings from 35 points going into the race to only seven points ahead of Creed with eight races remining to crown the champ.

Allgaier, a series-best six-race winner this season, had held a massive 229-point advantage in the standings before the points were re-set for this nine-race Chase run to the championship.

“Our Chevrolet was really good tonight and I felt like when we were out front there we were able to save the tires, really cruise and our pace was really good,’’ said the 2024 series champion Allgaier, who won Stage 1.

“And then somewhere in the middle of that second stage I started to feel like we weren’t as good as we needed to be and the last part of the race there, we just didn’t have the car that we needed at the end. And obviously, I was just trying to hang on and do everything I could.”

Viking Motorsports’ driver Anthony Alfredo finished sixth followed by Chase drivers JGR’s Taylor Gray and Creed’s teammate Sam Mayer. South Carolina native Jeremy Clements, who is not championship-eligible, finished ninth for his fourth top-10 showing of the year.

Chase driver Brandon Jones rounded out the top-10. Other title-eligible drivers Parker Retzlaff and Rajah Caruth were 21st and 26th, respectively.

It was a particularly eventful night for Caruth, who is competing for his first series championship. He rallied from being two laps down early in the race and was running well inside the top-10 with 45 laps remaining. But the same fuel pick-up issue that set him back early in the race reappeared with seven laps remaining and forced him to pit the No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet in those closing laps.

“We were respectable in the first stage before we had a fuel pick-up issue,’’ Caruth said, noting he wasn’t positive what the issue was yet.

“I am so proud of all our effort,’’ he continued. “We could have easily thrown ourselves out of it with an issue or put ourselves in a bad spot working through traffic. But we got all the way up to sixth place and was in good position for a good result.

“But that happens. It’s sports. … we’ll be good for next week.’’

JR Motorsports’ Kvapil is now third in points, 19 points off Allgaier. Hill is fourth, 36 points back and Day is now 5th, 46 points off the pace.

“Still a long way to go but need to keep finishing toward the front and scoring every point we can,’’ Creed said.

The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series returns to action for race two of the Chase next Saturday in the Nu Way 225 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Current NASCAR Cup Series rookie Connor Zilisch is the defending race winner.