On lap 78, Sorrow attempted a three-wide pass on corner entry and nearly had it made to move into the top 15, but made contact with the back of Thad Moffitt’s machine to send both cars spinning. Sorrow pulled away despite backing his car into the outside wall, but eventually retired from the race and saw his title hopes dashed prematurely with a 34th-place result.
When the race resumed, Jamie Weatherford hit the button, taking the lead again as Howard quickly diced his way back up to third.
But Alfredo was the one ready to seize his championship, as he surged to 11th with 20 to go and made a three-wide dive to take over the ninth spot 15 laps later, at that point seizing control of the championship fight from Howard that he would not relinquish the rest of the way.
Meanwhile, back-to-back cautions with 12 and 11 laps to go, respectively, set up restarts that put Hicks on Weatherford’s back bumper as the duo raced for the win – but it was a caution with four to go that made the difference.
After Heath Causey crashed hard into the wall, Hicks pounced on the restart, using an inside move in turn four to assume the lead for good.
Evans eventually dispatched Weatherford for second coming to the two to go mark, in what eventually became the pass for the win after Hicks’ disqualification.
Glenski ended as the runner-up in the adjusted finishing order, followed by Mack Little III, Weatherford and B.J. Mackey.
Howard was dropped from an apparent top five result in third to 19th after contact with Weatherford exiting turn four on the last lap, in the midst of a multi-car melee on the frontstretch coming to the finish line.
By virtue of that movement, Alfredo’s ninth-place finish was more than enough to secure his first series title.
“It’s just surreal that we pulled it off,” Alfredo smiled after the celebrations began in victory lane. “Lee (Faulk) did a really great job on the spotter’s stand tonight. It really helped … especially at a place like this, to have him reminding me, ‘Patience, patience, patience.’”
Alfredo said he was never concerned when Howard was racing up among the leaders, knowing that he was saving his equipment and in control of when he wanted to make his move to the front.
“It always comes down to the last 25 laps here, to when you see people making those aggressive moves. We knew we were ahead of the 9 (of Sorrow), which was who we needed to beat, but we knew Colby was the points leader when he was in the top three.”
“When we got to three-quarters, I started picking up the pace and just did what I needed to do. By the time we caught him, I knew we had it. This is just a great way to end the season. I couldn’t be happier with this result.”
