By Jerry Jordan, Editor
Carson Kvapil started from the pole, led a race-high 121 of 250 laps and dominated the race to hold off his JR Motorsports teammate, Justin Allgaier, by 0.434 seconds to win the National Debt Relief 250 on Saturday night at Martinsville Speedway.
The victory kept his championship alive while Jesse Love’s misfortune flipped the points lead to Allgaier with one race to go in the season.
“It’s awesome, I knew in practice we had a very fast Chevrolet,” Kvapil said. “Able to qualify on pole but just kinda had a rough race between the end of stage one 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.”
Jesse Love, the defending series champion and now former points leader, had his night come apart in pieces – a tire rub left him limping through the second stage and then a broken water line caused even more misery. But with 30 laps to go, he suddenly had no brakes. Love spun into the was in Turn 1 to bring out the 12th and final caution. He finished 30th, nine laps down and the impact was immediately seen in the title hunt.
“Nothing really to process,” Love said. “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.”
Love arrived at Martinsville 19 points ahead of Allgaier and left 22 behind him. Allgaier’s runner-up finish moved him to the top of the standings with Corey Day in third, 23 back. Kvapil is fourth at 31 back and Sheldon Creed fifth, the last of five drivers still in contention. The title will be decided Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway next Saturday, where Allgaier is the defending race winner. As for Love, statistically he’s not out of it but the easy path is clear: he needs to win. If not, he needs to hope Allgaier has a horrible day or does not finish.