The first two stages of the Alsco Uniforms 300 on Saturday (March 6th) at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway seemed, with caution, to lead to a calm, cool and collected finale than AJ Allmendinger snatched the lead from Daniel Hemric on lap 139. Within the next 10 laps, the field of the Xfinity series started a round of pit stops with a green flag, during which Allmendinger kept the lead. Then on lap 173, Austin Cindric gave Harrison Burton A bump that he won’t soon forget and that makes the 20-year-old Toyota driver spin. This incident gave the teams a chance to put their final set of Goodyears stickers on.

Ty Dillon stayed out of 21 to start again as he ran out of tires and were quickly disposed of behind him. Hemric and Allmendinger quickly slipped past him on the floor. A lap later, Dillon was in the wall after a collision with Brett MoffittSet up another reboot.

As leader, Hemric chose the outside for the restart, and Allmendinger took over the bottom. On the 13th for the restart, Hemric got off to a good start, but could not clear Allmendinger, who received a big boost from Noah Gragson. Allmendinger sent his Kaulig Racing Chevrolet into Turn 1, hugged the white line, cleared Hemric onto the back straight and drove to victory.

The good

If you need one more example of Cindric’s maturation as a racing driver, look no further than this. It mysteriously had a flat tire and was slowing down. Stuck on the outside, he couldn’t turn as far as the apron of the track until the entire field had passed, but not before he missed the pit lane entrance. A lap later, as he was crawling his No. 22 Team Penske Ford along the inside wall, Dillon broke off, stepped onto the track, and almost hit Michael Annett before turning and hitting Riley Fall.

This spawned a warning that Cindric would benefit from since he was the lucky dog. Cindric then had to fight his way through almost the entire field of Xfinity competitors again. While the 2020 Xfinity Champion never regained the lead, he would finish fourth after a clean and methodical charge forward. Two years ago, maybe even a year ago, Cindric may have tried to force the problem. But in 2021, after many lessons, he will know when and when not to force a problem.

JR Motorsports was finally able to achieve a group of great results. Annett and Gragson were consistently the two best JRM cars, although Allgaier had spent some time in the first few positions in the first half of the race. Gragson, Annett and Josh Berry finished fifth, sixth and seventh. Allgaier fought in the final segments of the race and made contact with the newcomer Santino Ferrucci (13th) and 14th place.

Once again, Hemric showed strength behind the wheel of his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota No. 18. He was the best of the four JGR cars and won the second stage. If he could have cleared Allmendinger at turn one at the last restart, Hemric might have been the one on the winning streak. His day is coming, and soon we can forget about his eight second places and talk about his first career win instead.

The bad

Before today’s race, there were high hopes for fall as the team he drives for swept Las Vegas in 2020 Chase Briscoe. But the lady’s luck wasn’t good for Fall and Stewart-Haas Racing Team # 98 in 2021 and didn’t play well for the Vegas native on his hometown track. Herbst was once again an innocent bystander in someone else’s mess. There was nowhere to go when Dillon’s Toyota came down the track on lap 56. Herbst’s right front crashed into the door of Dillon’s car. Fall’s right front wheel assembly was too damaged for his crew to fix, and the team had to call it a day. He was eleventh at the time, a position better than he had started. With three quarters of the race left, the team would still have a few opportunities to work on the car. But of four races in 2021, Fall was each involved in a fall.

The ugly one

Ryan victory When restarting on lap 63, the tire was rubbed and the tire slowly fell out. At the end of the fourth corner on lap 65 it came to a head. Sieg tried to collect the car and bring it to the apron, but could not keep the car off the grass. The splinter of his Ford Mustang dug into the grass, forcibly removing it from the vehicle. The car wasn’t tossed around as seen in previous splinters and grass accidents of a car, but it was still enough to see Sieg call it a day later a few laps later. It is such a shame to see that a minor incident can have such damaging consequences. This incident is not the fault of the grass; it was the splinter’s fault. Victory is just the latest example of why a valence, compared to a splinter, is better at sliding through the grass, or in this case, cutting it off.

One ugly moment that caused several dollars in damage to auto repairs occurred when Dillon crashed on lap 181. Dillon left the second corner with Berry under him and Moffitt sneaking up beside him. Unaware that Moffitt was there, however, Dillon moved forward, cutting off the left front of Moffitt’s Chevrolet. Why didn’t Dillon know Moffitt was there? The battery on his scout’s radio, Drew Herring, died and was in the process of changing it when the crash occurred. Again, it falls under the ugly umbrella this week because it was an unnecessary accident that ruined both Dillon and Moffitt’s cars, along with Alex Labbes Car, from a secondary incident. It was a tough lesson Herring learned – one he will certainly not soon forget.

Underdog performance of the race

I have to give this to Ferrucci. Last week I was a little disappointed that he didn’t run a cleaner race. But this week, until the last 10 rounds, he has done nothing to warrant a comment from the comment booth. For a new driver, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

He started 23rd and hovered around 20th running position for most of the race. As the laps clicked away, he slowly passed a few more cars. During the caution for Harrison Burton on lap 173, he was the lucky dog ​​that got him back on the lead lap. He fought and overtook Justin Allgaier and also survived contact from him. He finished the lead lap 13th, which is the third best career end for Sam Hunt Racing after 14 career starts.

Double duty interlopers

Tyler Reddick was the only precise driver of the NASCAR Cup Series in the field today. Reddick drove No. 23 for Our Motorsports and finished twelfth but finished seventh. Justin Haley recovered from a spin and finished eighth; He’ll be in the Spire Motorsports # 77 Chevrolet tomorrow (March 7th). Garrett Smithley and Timmy Hill, who are also in tomorrow’s cup race, finished 24th and 37th respectively.

Quotable

“First of all, it’s great to have you guys back in the stands. That’s the most important. And without you all [and] All of you at home, we can’t do that. Thank you for showing up and packing this place up! “- AJ Allmendinger

“You hate it when someone gets away with this, but we came here … and we wanted to try to have more speed to run laps and win stages, and we did that today. [We] lined up there with one shot and was just beaten. Congratulations to AJ, we have just been beaten. “- Daniel Hemric

Last word

You can never say how a NASCAR Xfinity Series race will play out. For the second year in a row, NASCAR’s second highest division produced four different winners in four races to open the season. Cindric started his title defense in the Xfinity series by giving team owner Roger Penske his first win on the Daytona Oval. The Daytona Road Course produced a surprise winner, Ty Gibbswho won the NXS launch in his first career. Myatt Snider won last week by beating a two-time Xfinity champion Reddick in a second overtime restart. And today Allmendinger reclaimed the lead at the last restart of the race to win on an oval for the second time in his career (Atlanta, 2020), securing a spot in the 2021 Xfinity Playoffs.

If you don’t watch the Xfinity series races live, you’re missing out! From the green flag to the checkered flag, every race is fun and you never know how a race will play out.

Next

The West Coast Swing ends next Saturday (March 13th) at Phoenix Raceway. Call 811 Before You Dig 200 starts at 5:30 p.m. on FS1 and MRN. Cindric won the final race in Phoenix to win his first Xfinity Series championship last November. Ty Gibbs returns to the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota No. 54 in his second career start. In two weeks’ time, Atlanta Motor Speedway will host its first of two races in 2021 before the Xfinity field has a two-week spring break.