With two wins in the first three races in the Chase for the Championship, Sheldon Creed has taken a marginal points lead, but this season continues to run through Justin Allgaier and Carson Kvapil.
Narratively, anyways.
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This is to take nothing away from Creed and the Haas Factory Team No. 00 but they certainly did not have the car to beat. Allgaier and Kvapil won the first two stages respectively and the other finished second in each stage respectively.
Then stuff happened, which is a recurring theme of all three playoffs this month, and the favorite contender across each division finds himself in a championship dogfight.
Allgaier won the first stage but ran into the back of Nick Sanchez after a stack up placing cars a lap down. Team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. talked Allgaier out of pitting for repairs, bluntly saying ‘I think its fucked; you got what you got.’
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He continued to battle for the lead until Kvapil suffered a loose right rear and lost several laps. Allgaier was then poised to win until Jesse Love slid him into the wall and eliminated both from contention.
Ultimately, Creed prevailed because Jonathan Toney called him in for tires with 26 to go. When an incident between Corey Day and Ryan Sieg set up overtime, Creed’s fresher tires stuck better than those under William Sawalich.
“Where were we before the caution, 10th,” Creed said. “Yeah, we were struggling. We weren’t going to pass anyone in front of us. And yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer for us to come down and get tires. And my pit crew just did a great job allowing me to be the first one on tires. That’s a big deal. Had (D
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“If I had like a 30 point lead, I would say yeah, we have a little bit control, but I mean you can lose 11 points through stages,” Creed said. “They just pay so much. If you have a couple bad stages, 11 points is eaten up pretty quickly or say (Allgaier) and I run within two positions of each other all night and he wins and I run second, he has the points lead.
“So yeah, I think you want ideally more than a 20 point lead and I don’t know, hopefully we can just keep growing it. I’d love to go to Homestead with like a 76-point lead, just have my feet kicked up. That would be the perfect world.”
Regardless, just like that, Creed leads Allgaier by 11 points and 37 over Kvapil.
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Meanwhile, Allgaier climbed out of his car and made a path right towards Love, still sitting in the Richard Childress Racing No. 2. It was a monologue and not a dialogue. Love accepted full responsibility afterwards.
“Well, I’m not going to tell you what he said to me, but (I) drove into him; we all saw what happened,” Love said. “… I screwed up and made a bad judgment call and in a lot of ways, screwed myself. …
“But you have to understand how it works. I drove in there, got into him, and once I got really close to him and put myself in that spot, you know I got loose and start knocking him up the racetrack. Once we make that initial contact, the second piece of contact, we’re both a little bit along for the ride. So, it wasn’t even processing if he had enough room or not when he hit the wall on exit because the damage was already done by my action in (Turn) 1.”
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Justin Allgaier confronts Jesse Love after the race
Justin Allgaier confronts Jesse Love after the race
For his part, Allgaier just wanted to make clear that it was a low percentage move cost them both the win and potentially the championship.
“I just told him I’m disappointed,” Allgaier said. “I mean, he knew it was a bad decision and I think that’s the hardest part. My big thing is I said, ‘I’ve raced you clean. I haven’t put a bumper to you.’
“All night long, we battled and I passed him clean all night and I don’t know. I just feel like that was egregious but at the end of the day, it’s Bristol. Like what Dale Jr. said, ‘It’s Bristol, baby,’ and things will happen inside 10 to go. Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes that’s how things go.”
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There was no rebuttal and Allgaier didn’t think Love would have one anyway. Love finished 14th and therefore gave up around a dozen points. He’s 41 points back.
“He knows he messed up … when I went out there to talk to him, he didn’t have anything to say because he knew, right,” Allgaier said. “Like, I could tell on his face he was not happy with the decision he made.”
Love said he would need to make a phone call this week to apologize.
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“Well, if I was him, I don’t know if I answer my phone call,” Love said. “To be honest, I’m still going to talk to him. I don’t know, man. He’s never really done me like that. And I’m not going to explain my thought process right now because it’s not going to fix anything. But I made a wrong move; I made a dumb decision, and I’m going to pay the price for it. And yeah, that’s not good.”
Allgaier said he would absolutely take the call.
There was very little for Kvapil to lament over beyond bad luck. He had the car to beat and if he continues to get that from Rodney Childers and company, he believes he will win enough to close the gap to Creed and Allgaier.
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“I think the rough math, that’s winning two races and you’ll be back to the lead,” Kvapil said. “But I think for us, we’re not going to have a win or crash mentality. We’re just going to do what we’ve done the last couple of weeks.
“I mean, just like today and just like last week, I think in the last couple of weeks we’ve gotten more than 15 stage points every week in the last couple of weeks. And today was 19 and we were going to come home with a top-three finish, whether it was winning second or third.
“I think we had the best car, but you never know what happens at the end of these things. But if we just keep having days like this where we’re stacking points and doing all the right things, running in the top-three every week, eventually you’re going to get a win and you’re going to, like today we had the best car.”
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Through it all, this season is still staggered towards Allgaier, Kvapil and Love, but Creed and Toney are executing at a mistake free level and it may be enough to upset the favorites.
“The cars have been faster and they’ve just done a really good job putting them together and finding some speed in them,” Creed said. “And obviously I think everyone kind of brings their best stuff and everything they learn throughout the season. And yeah, we just kind of combined it all when it comes times for the Chase and I just think our cars have been more capable.”
Watch: Creed: ‘Execution, all-time high’ after second Chase win
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