Noah Gragson didn’t win his first NASCAR championship Saturday night, but he sure made his presence felt in his first title opportunity. The 23-year-old Las Vegas native finished 12th – disappointing but still impressive considering his No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet hit the wall hard while running in third-place in the closing laps of the race.
Gragson earned his position in the Championship 4 with a clutch victory in the last Playoff race at Martinsville, Va. – a sort of walk-off homer in the racing world. In all, he won three races and scored 20 top-10 finishes over the 33-race season and qualified for his first ever Championship Race.
“Just disappointed,” Gragson said of the evening. “I’m not really sure what happened on that second to last restart
“We didn’t have the car nearly where we wanted it all weekend, practice, qualifying and the race,” he added. “Those guys, they beat us tonight. Congrats to them. Hats off to them. We just didn’t have it this weekend.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" 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, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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