Elliott would hold the point until 13 laps to go, when Almirola snuck across the line first as Elliott lost his drafting help and faded rapidly outside the top 10, but by the time the field made it back to turn one David Ragan was in front and hunting a victory for Matt Tifft – who he was subbing for in the No. 18 Toyota as Tifft underwent brain surgery earlier in the day to remove a slow-growing tumor.

At that point, the frontrunners went single-file back to seventh – where Allgaier and Logano were trying to carve their way back up through the field on the high side of the race track – and it appeared to be Ragan’s race to lose.

A caution coming to three laps to go, for a crash in turn three that saw David Starr spin up the track and collect Brennan Poole, would change all that and bunch the field back up as overtime loomed and fuel became a concern for many of the frontrunners.

Sadler would have restarted third, but had to pit for a splash of fuel, leaving Ragan on the bottom with teammate Erik Jones pushing as the green flag waved on lap 102 to begin the Overtime attempt. While the Joe Gibbs Racing duo made some headway on the first half-lap, they began to fall back as the lead group went three-wide, two-rows deep.

Ragan was on the bottom with Jones, Almirola was in the middle and had help from Allgaier and Ryan Sieg came sailing up the third lane via a massive shove from Joey Logano as the field exited turn four coming to the white flag. At that point, Ragan moved up two lanes to block Sieg’s momentum, leaving his teammate downstairs as Logano shot to the bottom of the race track to fall in line.

Sieg left Ragan to latch onto Allgaier’s back bumper entering turn one, leaving Ragan a lonely man as he fell back to meet the rest of the pack. Exiting turn two, it was Almirola, Allgaier, Sieg and Logano single-file out front as Ragan got tipped into the wall by Jeff Green, ricocheting back into the pack and triggering an eight-car pileup while the leaders raced to turns three and four.

Exiting the final set of corners, and just as Allgaier got a run from a side-draft to take the win away, the caution lights flickered to life – leaving the JR Motorsports driver dejected at having come oh-so-close to a victory at Daytona, after having also finished second at Talladega Superspeedway in May.

“We definitely had the momentum down the back there and kind of stalled out in the middle of three and four, but then felt like we had it coming back again towards the start-finish line,” Allgaier said. “When you lose them by that little bit it definitely is frustrating … but when you can be disappointed with second, it’s still a good day.”

“We’ll keep digging though. At some point, we’ve got to be able to maybe pull one of these off.”

Sieg tied his career-best XFINITY finish of third, set in the 2014 edition of the race, with Logano behind him in fourth after leading the most laps of anyone on the night.

Brendan Gaughan snuck through the final lap chaos to round out the top five.

Ryan Reed’s sixth-place effort was his first top 10 in the series since winning at Daytona in February of 2015, and 2000 series champion Green came home seventh for his first top 10 since 2005 at Richmond.

Spencer Gallagher, Elliott and Jones were the balance of the top 10.

The NASCAR XFINITY Series returns to action on July 8 at Kentucky Speedway, with the running of the Alsco 300. Brad Keselowski is the defending winner of the race.