Noah Gragson Wins Xfinity race in Richmond (9-11-21
By: Becca Cottingham
Headline Photo Credit: Noah Gragson Twitter Page
We head to Richmond for a doubleheader of the Xfinity and Cup series for a full day of short track racing. Today, as we remember all the lives lost, the crews and the fans were presented flags and asked to stand for laps nine through 11. We see the battle in the front between the front of the track of Austin Cindric and Harrison Burton. We stay calm through the competition caution. We get back from the competition caution and drivers start going three wide. Austin Cindric and AJ Allmedinger battle it out for the lead and the leader of the regular season championship. We did have a couple of drivers who put on new tires during the competition caution. Tommy Joe Martins and JJ Yeley both are charging through the field on fresh tires. Within just a few laps they have both moved up almost twenty positions and are still moving forward. Both drivers are in the top ten and appear to not be slowing down at all. Tommy Joe Martins continues to show speed and drive in his car as he moves through the top five drivers. He makes it to AJ Allmedinger and with just a few laps left in stage one. With AJ fighting for the regular season championship he is not going to make this easy and will fight back as Tommy Joe Martins passed him. The two go battling through the end and as one of the tail end drivers shove him upward. This allows AJ Allmedinger to get around him and win stage one just beating out Tommy Joe Martins.
We go back to green and caution comes out as the drivers go three wide. This leads to Tommy Joe Martins spinning out and flat spotting his tires. Once we got back to racing we did have other drivers going three wide. Ty Gibbs got the lead and has not looked back since then. He stretched out his lead with no issues showing the speed that he has in his car. All of the racing happened well behind him as no one was able to catch him. The catution comes out with just two laps prior to the end of the stage. So Ty Gibbs will win stage two under caution.
We get into the third and final stage of this race. We see an accident with two drivers making contact. One with heavy contact with the inside wall. This will lead to interesting calls on pit strategies for multiple cars. Some cars decided to come down pit road for new tires and others stayed out on the track. This will be interesting on how things play out for all drivers. The drivers start beating and banging right from the beginning. They stay green for multiple laps and another hard crash happens. Drivers that did not come down pit road prior came down pit road. Most are already out of fresh tires they are having to put on cold scuffed tires. Dale Jr was caught speeding and was sent to the back of the pack. We then get back to back cautions and multiple restarts. Followed by three wide racing with multiple drivers throughout the field. The drivers look like they are ready to battle for every inch of the track possible. Everyone is hungry for the win and a little bit of bumping to get them win will not be held back. Noah Gragson gets up to the front of the racing group. He has a lot of people around him wanting to win and will have difficulty more than likely pulling off the back to back wins. However, it appears he is going to give everything possible to win. He will put everything on the line and hold the field off to get the unofficial win.
