Brandon Jones may not be the flashiest name in the NASCAR Xfinity garage, but on Saturday at Kansas Speedway, he made the rest of the field look like they’d shown up with rental cars from the airport. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver drove off into the sunset—well, two and three-quarter seconds of sunset—to bag his seventh career win and his second of the season. More importantly, the victory punted him straight into the Round of 8, a postseason milestone he hasn’t hit since 2022.
Jones led 54 laps, but it was how he led them that mattered. While Connor Zilisch and the usual suspects circled with menace, Jones was cool, clinical, and utterly unbothered. He crossed the line with a margin of 2.787 seconds, which in NASCAR terms is practically enough time to order a cheeseburger and still make it back in time to wave the checkered flag yourself.
“It’s huge to win the final stage, would have liked to have won the first two stages but I’m not going to get greedy,” Jones said. “No mistakes, the entire day was so well executed. In my career that was by far my best executed race. I’m so proud of these guys, we work so hard the entire week to get here and put races like this together. I was so happy it went green. I know for the fans they want to see action, but I was just praying for long runs was so good there.”
Much of the day, though, belonged to defending series champion Justin Allgaier. He led the most laps—79 of them—and casually swept both stages as if it were his personal exhibition. And then, as has happened too many times in his career, pit stops snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. At the end of both stages, his JR Motorsports crew shuffled him down the order, the second time spitting him out in fifth place to start Stage 3. After that, Allgaier’s day began to resemble a slow-motion train derailment. He led just four more laps, those only because of a round of green-flag stops.
Then came the final caution, which might as well have been his execution notice. While the leaders pitted, Allgaier stayed out on worn rubber. It looked brave in the moment—like bringing a knife to a gunfight and hoping for the best. But bravery doesn’t keep grip in your tires. When the green waved with 38 laps to go, he was immediately devoured by the pack on fresh Goodyears. By the time it was over, the man who’d ruled most of the afternoon wound up a tragicomic 13th.
Still, Allgaier had no problem with his crew chief’s strategy to say out.
“They work for you sometimes, they don’t some other times,” Allgaier said. “Disappointed… our Chevrolet was really good.”
Not even Zilisch, the season’s nine-time winner and current wunderkind of the series, could find a way around Jones. Zilisch has been rewriting the record books this season, but on this day he found his kryptonite in the form of Jones and his Toyota. He finished second—his 16th consecutive top-five, breaking Sam Ard’s ancient record—but he had no answer when it counted.
“I didn’t feel like our car was winning-capable, except at a point there in stage three, I thought we had a chance at it,” said Zilisch. “We’ll look at it and see what we could have done better. We were just kind of throwing Hail Marys at it all day and trying to make one stick—but it didn’t stick.”
Behind them, the rest of the playoff drivers filled out the scoreboard like obedient schoolchildren. Austin Hill grabbed third, Sammy Smith and Sheldon Creed rounded out the top five. Taylor Gray, Jesse Love, Nick Sanchez, Brendan Queen, and Dean Thompson made up the rest of the top ten. Carson Kvapil, Sam Mayer, and Harrison Burton were further down the order, licking their wounds.
The good news for both Allgaier and Zilisch is that the math still loves them. Both earned enough points to advance to the Round of 8, even if the road getting there looked rougher for one than the other.
Next up is the Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where half the field will treat it like Monaco and the other half like bumper cars at the county fair. It’s the first elimination race of the playoffs, and if Kansas was any indication, the script isn’t finished.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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