DOVER, Del. – Austin Cindric made a statement Saturday to the rest of the NASCAR Xfinity Series field: the road to the series championship goes through his No. 22 Ford Mustang.
Cindric emphasized his point with his third win of the season, topping the Drydene 200 at the Monster Mile by 3.796 seconds over Josh Berry after not having the best car early in the race.
The first two 45-lap stages at the one-mile, high-banked concrete oval were taken by JR Motorsports drivers – Justin Allgaier and Berry, respectively – and JRM appeared to have control of the day well in hand as the race wound into the final stage.
Allgaier took the point during the penultimate round of pit stops during the final stage break of the day, leading the field back to green on lap 97 of 200, but Berry laid in wait and picked his teammate off in traffic on lap 114, quickly pulling a gap as ill handling on longer runs caused Allgaier to begin fading.
Berry led through a caution with 62 laps left, when a mechanical failure on John Hunter Nemechek’s Toyota Supra caused fluid to be laid down on the track surface, but a sluggish restart with 56 to go saw Allgaier launch back to the point from the bottom groove as Berry washed wide in turns one and two.
Cindric passed Berry for second in that exchange, and then the son of Team Penske president Tim Cindric quickly closed on Allgaier’s back bumper to challenge for the victory.
The defending series titlist made the winning move with 51 laps left, racing away over a green-flag run to the finish as Berry was left to fend off Allgaier for runner-up honors down the stretch.
That battle was well behind Cindric, however, who collected his 11th career Xfinity Series win and his long-awaited first win at Dover.
“This is so cool,” Cindric said of finally earning a Dover victory. “There’s just very few places that really have the same intensity throughout a lap as this place does. It’s really hard. It’s honestly quite challenging to race here. But ever since I came here the first time in a truck, this place has kind of drawn me in. I’ve had the opportunity to drive at some really cool race tracks in my life and in my career, and this is one of the really enjoyable places I’ve driven at because it makes you beg to get around here.
“Honestly, from the get-go, I believed we could do this,” Cindric added. “It is hard to believe, but starting 16th at this joint makes it difficult. It isn’t easy to pass here, so we just kept at it the whole time. We made the right adjustments on pit stops and I feel like I have learned a lot about this race track, enough to get the Car Shop Ford Mustang into victory lane.”
Berry’s second-place finish wasn’t the win he desired, but it did come with a consolation prize in the form of the final $100,000 Dash 4 Cash bonus of the year – the first Dash 4 Cash win of Berry’s career.
It also gave JR Motorsports a sweep of the four checks this year. Noah Gragson took the first three.
“It could have been one spot better, gosh,” Berry lamented after the race. “We were so good today. Taylor (Moyer, crew chief) had this Tire Pros Chevy tuned up so well. That last run, we just fired off a little too free and got eaten up [on the last restart]. Justin and I got racing each other, and the 22 [Cindric] got away from us.
“We just weren’t quite as good the last run as we were the run before, but in my first race here … to run top-two or three all day, there’s a lot to be proud of in that.”
Allgaier crossed the line third, followed by Kaulig Racing’s A.J. Allmendinger and Joe Gibbs Racing rookie Ty Gibbs, who earned his fourth top-five finish in five series starts with a fifth-place run Saturday.
Harrison Burton, Michael Annett, Ryan Sieg, Daniel Hemric and Brandon Brown closed the top 10.
The day’s most notable incident occurred on lap 58, when Jesse Little spun coming off turn two and was hit by the spinning car of Matt Jaskol, which then climbed on top of Little’s No. 78 in the aftermath.
Both drivers were uninjured in the wild crash, which necessitated a 10 minute, 14 second red flag period for cleanup.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series returns to action on May 22 with the tour’s inaugural race at the 20-turn Circuit of the America road course in Austin, Texas.