That final caution flew with 40 laps left, and Bowman lined up on the outside of row five after his pit stop, while JR Motorsports teammates William Byron and Elliott Sadler led the field back to green from the front row.
Ty Dillon spun the tires and quickly shuffled the deck, allowing Bowman to fly forward in a hurry as he chased the checkered flag. He soared around the outside of all the cars that pitted for tires, then dispatched Sadler and Bowman to take the top spot for good.
Bowman led the final 32 laps of the race, holding as much as a three-second margin at one point, but a hard-charging Sam Hornish Jr. cut that deficit to just 1.39 seconds at the checkered flag.
While it wasn’t the win Hornish hoped for, it was still a strong result for the part-time Team Penske driver, who substitute teaches away from the race track.
“I think if it had been anybody else other than my teammate or Bowman winning, I’d probably be pretty disappointed with tonight for as fast as we were, but the fact that we stuck with it makes me smile,” said Hornish. “The car was great. We needed long runs and didn’t have any early on in the race, but we finally got the car adjusted right where we thought we needed to be and just overstepped it a little but.”
“On that last restart I kind of got stuck on the bottom … and just ran out of time there at the end. I really believe I could have caught Bowman, but catching him and getting around him for the win is two different things.”
Hornish’s teammate Ryan Blaney crossed the line third after leading 38 laps, followed by Austin Dillon and Brennan Poole, who was the highest-finishing playoff driver in fifth.
Cole Custer, Daniel Hemric, polesitter Daniel Suarez, Matt Tifft and Elliott Sadler completed the top 10.
Suarez’s night was an up-and-down affair. He led a race-high 111 laps and won the second stage, but fell back after an air hose got caught behind the right-rear wheel on his final pit stop and could never recover.
His teammate Erik Jones, who won the first stage and ran among the top three virtually all night, spun and hit the inside wall on lap 121. He fell eight laps down and out of contention for the win after that point.
Of note, though Gaughan beat Reed on the race track by one position — finishing 11th to Reed’s 12th-place run — Reed had amassed enough points in the first two races of the round at Kentucky and Dover to edge Gaughan by a single marker on the cut-off line.
In addition to Gaughan, Jeremy Clements, Michael Annett and Blake Koch were also eliminated from the NASCAR XFINITY Series playoffs on Saturday evening.
The start of Saturday night’s race, originally scheduled for 3 p.m. ET, was delayed by nearly five and a half hours due to persistent rain throughout the day. The green flag finally waved just after 8:30 p.m. ET.
The second round of the NASCAR XFINITY Series playoffs kicks off on Oct. 21, with the Hollywood Casino 300 from Kansas Speedway.
Full race results can be viewed on the next page…
