Form there, a 14-lap green flag run broke out, allowing the leaders to settle in before another caution period struck for debris with 28 to go. Under this caution, the rains came back to stay, with all the leaders coming down pit road for wet-weather tires.
The ensuing restart with 20 to go saw Marks go wide in turn four, giving the lead to Wallace, but the race quickly went back yellow after less than a lap for the stopped car of Tim Cowen in turn one.
After cleanup, the race was restarted with 14 to go with Wallace leading and Marks on the prowl. Both Wallace and Justin Allgaier went off at turn four, with Wallace rebounding to hold the lead, but he then went off at the final corner to promote Dillon to the lead and Marks to second.
It took three more laps before Marks capitalized on Dillon’s mistake at the keyhole, ducking inside the No. 3 Chevrolet to take the lead for good and quickly opening up a 21-second advantage with lap times four seconds per lap faster than anyone else.
That lead would be erased though, with the eighth and final caution coming out with five laps to go when T.J. Bell hit the tire barrier off the exit of turn nine.
Marks led the field back to green for a green-white-checkered, two lap dash to the finish as a downpour opened up to the point of near-zero visibility.
To make matters worse for Marks, Hornish fought his way past Blaney to move into second, but simply ran out of time to catch the No. 42 Katerra Chevrolet in the end and settled for second in his second start of the season.
“I couldn’t see a whole lot at the end,” Hornish admitted. “You’re supposed to stay off the rubber when it rains and by about five laps into a run, we only had a windshield wiper to the left side and I couldn’t see anything on the right side … so at that point you’re kind of guessing where you’re going.”
“All in all, a good day for the Rheem Chevrolet, though,” he added. “My hat’s off to Justin Marks. I generally held myself as a pretty decent rain racer and even given the opportunity there at the end, I couldn’t do anything with him. I would have had to take massive chances with our car to be able to do anything and you still gotta pass him to keep up with him. I’m proud of what the guys gave me on the No. 2 car today. I wish we would have gotten a little more out of it. In the dry, I feel like we could have won, but Justin just went out there and was just a monster in the wet.”
Blaney, Dillon and Allgaier completed the top five.
Notables outside the top five included Lally in seventh, new series points leader Elliott Sadler in ninth and Alon Day’s rally back to a 13th place finish in his XFINITY debut.
