That Saturday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was a massive missed opportunity for almost everyone on the grid, as Motorsport.com reports. Sheldon Creed walked into the desert with a golden chance to take a firm grip on the NASCAR O'Reilly Series championship, but he let it all slip away with a desperately disappointing 13th-place finish and zero stage points to show for his efforts.
It was a chaotic night that upended the title fight with five races still to go in the Chase. Justin Allgaier, the presumptive title favorite, saw his race ruined in an incident completely out of his control when a loose wheel sent Brandon Jones spinning hard into the wall, collecting Allgaier in the carnage. Creed had turned his Haas Factory Team No. 00 into a machine to be feared, even taking the early lead before his car suddenly fell off a cliff. He admitted he had no answers for the handling disaster that followed, noting that his car went from feeling decent to getting unbelievably loose and eventually losing all ability to turn.
Meanwhile, Carson Kvapil couldn't quite manage to outduel Corey Day in the closing laps, leaving everyone else to pick over the wreckage of a chaotic points battle. The standings now read with Creed at the top, followed by Kvapil at -19, Jesse Love at -22, Allgaier at -31, Day at -41, and Sam Mayer sitting at -52. Mayer was genuinely flabbergasted to realize he was only 52 points out of the lead after pulling off a sixth-place finish and banking 19 stage points. His entire mood shifted on the spot when he realized it could turn into a massive brawl.
Day, piloting the No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet alongside Kvapil in the No. 1 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, capitalized brilliantly to take the victory. For Day, who admitted his original goal was simply to make the Chase and grab a single win, having three victories now puts him squarely in the championship conversation. "That is far exceeding my expectations," Day said.
With everyone seemingly taking their turn at misfortune, the conventional wisdom in the garage is that every contender gets one mulligan. Creed hopes his nightmare night in Vegas is the only one he has to burn. As the series packs up to head to Charlotte, the math has tightened up dramatically, leaving the championship wide open for anyone willing to seize it.
