NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series Highlights | 2026 Bristol Motor Speedway

Tonight it's race three of the chase for the O'Reilly auto part series. Jimmie Spencer waving the green flag. Here we go in thunder valley. Jesse love. We're going to see the leader most likely take the outside on all these starts. You just can carry that momentum. You can also launch so good on the straightaways, but you see most of these guys migrating right to the bottom of the track because that's where the grip is right now. It's going to be a battle right there to get to the bottom, especially early on. up there on the outsides. That's where he was so fast in the spring and even early on right now thinks I'm just gonna stay up here. 88 Roger Carruth in front of him. Teammates Sammy Smith, Justin Allgaier. As we watch the battle for third, see, Cruz isn't really running the top. When we see these guys get to the top, they're gonna be almost all the way up against the wall. It's kind of no man's land. Really being in between the two groups, you could see how dark it is on the very bottom. And then, as you get up towards the top, that's where the rubber has been laid down. Pretty impressed. The 19 has been able to hang on as well as he has right there, and he's gonna lose that opportunity to get behind here. There he goes. Now he gets to the bottom. I thought that might be filled by Sam Mayor if he didn't get there quickly. He saw that whole closing up and was able to move in slot into the bottom. Justin Allgaier. I feel like he's one of the most aggressive and putting the right side of his race car to the left side of your race car. He's just so comfortable. He's been in this series for so long. He just knows the dimension of that race car so well. I'd say that's nothing at Bristol. Allgaier goes after second with Cruz here. I didn't believe it, actually. If you see Justin doing that same thing, he basically just touched Brent Cruz there like he did his teammate, Carson Kuempel. That's what I mean by Justin just so comfortable in these cars. You saw Jeb Burden, unscheduled pit stop from 15th, and now a chase driver doing the same. was running 11th, but he, too, going to make an unscheduled pit stop inside of 20 laps to go. Stage one. In a series of just a couple laps, we had two cars have right front issues. That was Jeb Burden. The 27s. We get a look back at this. You'll see him go off the corner. There's the sparks. The right front has gone down. Oh, look at Jeb. Jeb is all over the back of the 87. Sanchez just roughed him up. Those two have had a little bit of a history this year, and times have run into each other. Jeb sending a bit of a message. Oh, there's another. The 21's in the wall now. Austin Hills. He got turned down as well. Yep. And he just went a lap down. He skates up the track. Jesse Love drives by. Jesse Love got tied up. There were two lap cars running side by side. There was nowhere for him to go. It looked like I thought he had a flat. He was going so slow. That's allowed the seven of Allgaier to drive right up on his back bumper. And just before all that started, he had almost an over three-second lead at one point, and Justin Allgaier raced that, got right to his back bumper, and I was thinking Danny Stockman might be seeing all these issues and thinking back off. Can't do that. If you want to go and get this stage win, he's going to have to fight Justin Allgaier, who's been so good on the bottom, and showing that once again, but now goes to the top in one and two. Now, this is the worst nightmare of the 51's in front of him, too. Look how slow everyone is. There comes Justin on the top, but the momentum's going to be on the outside right here. Allgaier lap traffic going to the outside of Love side by side for the lead as we come to two laps to go. Stage one. Yeah, there's nowhere to go. You see the 92's got the lanes blocked. Sanchez trying to squeeze through the middle. Don't get yourself in trouble, guys. Caution comes out now. The stage would be over. Allgaier able to manipulate the lap traffic, go to the outside, and take the race lead. And Cuapo's able to get to the inside also of the 92. Love went from leading this race. He's going to be in third or fourth now as you see Rick Cruz is going to go by. Just can't get the right lane. Just an incredible finish to the stage. The 2 car is reeling after leading the first 81 laps, and for Justin Allgaier, it's going to be his tenth stage win at Thunder Valley. I feel like the car is good enough. I don't want to kill the balance, you know what I mean? Plus two for Love, and there's the tape they put on the 7. Already gone. Allgaier third as they come off the pit lane. You know, Dillon reported they got the tape on the 7, and about the time that he said it was on there, it had already blown off. But I look at his problems, he's one of four chase drivers that had an issue in the opening stage. It's like wrapping for Christmas when I try to do it. Brandon Jones made a second pit stop. Yeah, it looked like they had an issue. Right rear tire, you're going to see. Going to pull this off. Threads maybe are a little boogered up. And Carson Quaple in charge as the leaders come through the Echo Park automotive restart zone. It's stage two at Bristol. That bottom lane is so hard to get going on. We saw Jesse Love pushing the 1 up the racetrack, trying to get a good angle, get up to where some more grip was. You see, it's just such a struggle to get going. Boy, Allgaier not wasting any time. Look at the wiggle for Quaple. There goes Allgaier to the race lead, and Cruz looking outside as well. If the damage is going to hurt him, it's not showing right here on the short run. Three wide. Seeg outside of Suarez, down on the inside, double zero Sheldon Creed, who came in with a championship lead. And up in front of him, Corey Day has worked his way up to eighth in the running order. Oh, Brent Cruz into the wall. He was to the outside. I don't think he knew they were three wide at that particular point. Quaple trying to take advantage. One back on point in that inside lane. Maybe not. Seven with a rally. Jesse Love right there as well. Jesse Love being able to fight back on the bottom. These two guys running the top. See if he can get them cleared. Allgaier's car took off really good. You see a little loose right there on the exit. I just think that damage on the front end is going to hurt him more. Oh, you see sparks coming out of the car now, bottoming out on the exit of the corner. And it's going to be hard to quantify exactly what that damage is doing and why it's taking away performance for him. You might feel a balance difference just in terms of that car being tighter because it doesn't quite have the front down first. You see this basically trying to clear himself in front of the 19. The 19 was there. They have that contact on the straightaway. But I don't think he had a choice, right? Yeah. I don't even have a car inside. Yeah. But I think this is the moment where Justin Allgaier is just going to have to assess what the situation is that race car balance wise, do the best he can this stage and hope by the time they can get to pit road that they can make the adjustments to counteract the damage. Get a look right here. Brick crews say he did know they were three wide perspective. You see right there probably needs to have a little more more give right there early on in the race. Natalie Decker goes for a slide. Second caution of the night. First for an incident on track. It comes with 47 to go in our second stage. A quick look. See who I'm going to say. There was some help here. A little scooch trying to say, please move, please move. She comes back down, checks up off the corner. He gets into the rear, spins her around. Alfredo's already frustrated, right? Because he had the tire issue. It's the second straight week. They've had a problem. He's a couple of laps down in 26th. Guy's been running so well lately. Then you get trapped here and you're like, come on, help me out kind of thing. And there's a couple messages being sent there on the entry. And then from that other angle, it almost looks like she even checks up a little bit on the exit of the corner. That's when he spins around. All guy or front row with his teammate, Carson Quapel. See Jesse Love actually chose the top second row outside, gave up being on the front row, just seeing how hard it was to launch that last restart. It's going to pay off for all guys. He's going to settle into second place. Justin did a great job down there. He's really been. Oh, wow. Jesse Love to the bottom. I was just going to say that Justin's been so good on the bottom when it's available to him. He talked about being tight with that damage. It's removing front downforce that car's not turning as well. But as you mentioned, Adam, he just has to sort of make it work in this stage, get as much stage points as he can and see if they can sort it out at the stage break. LaVar Scott coming in in the 45. Smoke there for LaVar Scott. Slow. Possibly some sort of engine issue. 54. Taylor Gray racing with 19 of Cruz. Two young drivers from Joe Gibbs Racing that will be back next year. Oh, my goodness. Jeremy Clements just got the free pass and hanging on to one there in the 51. Well, we're seeing the rear of LaVar Scott's car. Then we saw the smoke. Didn't see the front of it completely caved in. This is what could have happened to Justin Allgaier when he got his front end damage. Possibly punctured the radiator there. Speak about being high. Oh, that's a little too high. Cruz getting into the outside wall. We've seen him flirt with that all night long. A bit of a kiss. That opened the door for Gray to get by. Oh, Cory's trying to slow me. Wow. That was snug. And look who's following him through. 17 paving the way for the 18. Who had that in the script tonight at Bristol? And now they're side by side. William was thinking, yeah, Brennan, I've felt that a couple times this year. Not so bad. We get another look right here. Cory thought he was clear. Clearly he was not. I'm not sure what the return gesture was, but we saw that friendly thank you from day. And I think about how fun things are going to be in the future because a lot of the ones we see are going to return to the same car next year. Wow. That right there is Bristol, is it not? That leads down to one second now as Carson's caught this lap traffic, having a hard time getting. It's interesting that Raj is racing him so hard knowing how many laps down he is. Final lap of the stage. The advantage for Quapel inside of a second, but he's going to cruise to the green and white checkered flag. It'll be his fourth stage win of 2026 junior motorsports sweep of the night. Stage one to Allgaier. Stage two to Quapel. Green in the final stage at Bristol. Really slow shift right there was trying to get out of the way, so we didn't get run over. So impressed with the seven, though, on the inside, we haven't seen anybody be able to hang on like that. He's launching so well. Classic Justin Allgaier. He's so good on restarts, probably one of the best in the sport of all three series on restarts. He makes the late the unpreferred lane work to his advantage often. Back there in 11th, lost some ground. Racing with Sanchez, who's made his way into the top ten. As we check back in on Jesse love to say Jesse loves made a great little recovery. It looked like that restart was gonna be a disaster for the two car, but he settled back into fourth place. Still in a great position. Take a look at this replay here. The yellow light was flashing. I saw that. So that might have been why Jesse pulled over. I think maybe the caution came out. We had a rogue light. I thought maybe something happened back in the field. We were, in fact, under yellow. We were not. We continue green as we get under way here in the final stage. That's gonna get tight right there in the lap car. Garrett Smithley in the zero. Contact from Brett Cruz. Brett's like, please get out of the way. Patience not always an option here. I don't think there was a please there. Was it not? I don't think so. Allgaier closing in. Oh, yeah. He just touched the wall. He was two tenths a lap faster. A lap ago, a tenth faster that lap. Let's take a listen to one radio. He can tell he's got a loose wheel. Got a little vibration. It probably gets worse when he gets into the corner. I'm gonna say it's a rear. He feels like the balance is getting loose because normally if you have a loose wheel and it's on the rear, the balance goes loose. It's on the right front. The car gets tight just because that is bouncing. It's getting worse and worse. There's a lot of load. We saw the track bar break on a car earlier today. Suspension. Teammates for the lead. 50 to go. Just over 50. And Allgaier takes over the top spot. Driving by Quapel. Gray waiting in line. You can see Carson can barely hold a line right here. You mentioned what that feels like inside the car. It takes away your vision because it vibrates the car so violently. It takes the car out of the racetrack. It feels like there's no grip because it's bouncing so much. These are already a really tough place to drive a race car in terms of the joints and the differences and the concrete surfaces. You hear Rodney coming on the radio basically saying tough it out. Look what that's done to the points. You're leading. You're dominating. You've got all those stage points. Everything feels good. And the minute that is compromised, boom, it flips. And now Allgaier is back to plus 27. And really, despite two tough weeks and some damage early tonight, back where he was coming into the postseason. If that was the one car he had smoking now, there's a larger issue here. He was one of three chase drivers coming into the night that had not had an issue so far in the postseason. But big problems now for the one of Quapel who's riding third. You got to think that's a wheel bearing or something. If it's smoking like that, if he's lost brakes, it's not going to continue to go much longer anyway. I had a hub bad here two years ago, and that was the exact same feeling. It felt like a vibration. Then you lose the brakes. Immense heat basically. You take away the brakes. You know as a driver inside the car by the smell. The motor oil smells different than the transmission or the rear end grease. So he's getting that smell inside the car. It's gotten so bad he's going to pit here now. And you don't, based on fuel, have to pit in this final stage. So it's not like everybody else is going to have to come and you could benefit from it cycling through. If we stay green, no one is going to make a pit stop unless you have a problem like what we see here with Carson Quapel who's going to come down with 44 to go. One stage two, second in stage one, leads 155 laps. But here he comes with the unscheduled pit stop. Dylan? And listening to Rodney Childers, Rodney thinks maybe they have a right rear that's been severed. So the crew is going to look at that and they may have to clamp that off. And Rodney is just now asking him if they can see where the brake fluid is coming from. And you see the crew gesturing there on the right rear. So they may try to patch that up. But obviously they're going to lose all these laps and effectively it's going to be day over for the 1. And the caution is out. Fourth one tonight. Clement stays on the lead lap. And this is a stressful time for all these crew chiefs. What do you do? Because you're going to be inside of 20 laps to go when we return to the green flag. There's a similar position to a year ago. Well, if you're in the top five, I think it's a great point, Adam. You wouldn't pit. You're going to stay out here. We saw Larson, who had a dominant car here in the spring, with 20 or 30 laps to go, wasn't able to make that ground up on cars that he had been significantly better than all day long. Yeah, interesting. Talking with Adam Wall earlier in the day, I asked him about this scenario and he said it just depends on where we are running. If we can gain some lanes, then obviously we would stay out. That was not the case for the 17. So brought him down here. Corey is saying once it rubbers in, he can get down the hill and make speed. But before that, he just sits on top of the racetrack. Seth Chafka, the crew chief, said if everybody in front of us stays out, we're going to pit. Brent said it just takes too long to build grip and fire off on stickers, so do not free me up any here. If we're going to go to stickers, you'll see the chassis adjustment there. I'm presuming to tighten him up in the 19. Sheldon Creed said he fired off free, got good in the middle of the run, and then got tight. They'll go ahead and change four tires and make some adjustments on the 00 for the short run to the finish. Going to be right around 15 laps to go when we go green. Unfortunately for crews, they were best in the running order of those that came down the pit lane, but a bobble there cost them some track position, so they'll be behind day and Creed of those on fresh tires when we get the restart. All Geyer and Love, the last two champions on the front row. Here we go to settle it at Bristol. Just a good restart by Jesse Love on the bottom. Can he clear Taylor Gray off of two? He's definitely going to be. He'll be right on the rear bumper of Justin Allgaier. So the outside lane doesn't work out for Gray. Front row is good, and he's right there. He's going to be the inside reigning champ had not won a race this year to last. He's trying to go back to back to the inside. Jesse Love so aggressive. We'll see what Taylor Gray decides to do. Love's going to get the run on the outside. William 13 laps to go. Jesse is just driving that car for everything. It's working right now. He's overdriving. It's so bad. All Geyer back to fourth, and here comes Shelton Creed. Double zero on those tires. 12 to go this time around. Taylor Gray looking inside for the lead. I think if you're Jesse Love, you give him the inside. It's so much easier to manage that race if you're on the top. We've seen how good, though, the 54 has been across the bottom all night long. But we have seen some wild finishes here at Bristol. Could get another one here tonight. Jesse's just got to clean it up. There's a ton of mistakes there. First into the 7, then hitting the wall on the exit of 4. Don't let the 54 clear you. You've got to stay to the outside of him. Oh, and Taylor knows it. He's going to slide up. Here comes William. He leads with 10 laps to go. All Geyer back up there racing for second. And Sheldon Creed is there. He came down pit road. He is on tires. That's been the best news for Sheldon Creed, is each of these leaders taking themselves out, using those new tires to all that they're worth right here. He needs to try and get by both of these guys as fast as possible as he goes to the top around both of them. Three wide for second. All Geyer, Gray, and Creed, who's now to the runner-up spot. What a start to the postseason for Sheldon Creed. He's a half a second back right now. Four laps to go. It's going to be close. Right at seaground into Cory Day. Into the wall. Three laps to go. Caution is out. That is not what Suwaloj wanted. Caution number five. And it will equal overtime here at Bristol. Get a look back here. The fight for the lead. Jesse Love got to the inside of All Geyer. Tried to slide job him here. Really had no chance of clearing him. All Geyer fights back on the outside. Gets sandwiched into the wall. It was a beautiful move to do the over-under that he did there by Jesse Love. But just overdrove it down into turn one. Couldn't hold the bottom. And the favor was repaid by Taylor Gray here. Just trying to clear himself but wasn't quite there. Much closer to clearing him there. I think as a driver inside the car, you're dependent on your spotter. But you see about two foot from clearing him, William Suwaloj all by himself on the bottom just cruised right on by. This is why we're under yellow. Parker Retzlaff on the outside. Three-wide Corey Day and Ryan Sieg. Sieg barely hanging on right there. Corey Day gets so lucky that he doesn't get right hooked into the outside wall. Big impact for the 39. We're ready for overtime. Sponsored by Credit One Bank for what's ahead. Suwaloj Creed on the front row. Finish it at Bristol. Creed gets away. Cruise behind him. He's on the tires. So is Day. What a restart by Sheldon Creed at the bottom. We talked about how difficult it was. But obviously those newer tires hooked up. But William Suwaloj fighting back on the top side. One lap to go. Double zero out front. Here comes 18 in the outside lane. William Suwaloj. Able to find the momentum up there. Off of turn four. Sheldon Creed made for the chase. He wins again. Taking it at Bristol. We've seen this walk many times, Allgaier going down, coming up on the short end of the stick. Justin rightfully upset with that move. Well, it just seems like, I mean, it's happened numerous times this year that he's the guy that has to go down and try to be the bigger person. I'm sure Jesse's not proud of the move that he tried to pull off that didn't work right there.