Sheldon Creed was presented with a legitimate opportunity to take real control of the NASCAR O’Reilly Series championship but let it slip away with an overall disappointing race on Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The leader of the Chase finished 13th and scored zero stage points on a night where presumptive title favorite Justin Allgaier was collected in an incident not of his doing when a loose wheel broke Brandon Jones into the wall.
It was also an opportunity for Carson Kvapil, who just couldn’t outduel Corey Day in the closing laps, all resulting in a championship battle that is wide open with five races to go.
Sheldon Creed
Carson Kvapil -19
Jesse Love -22
Justin Allgaier -31
Corey Day -41
Sam Mayer -52
Even Mayer was completely flabbergasted to realize that he was only 52 points out of the lead, his entire mood changing upon realizing that his sixth place and 19 stage points paid off given what happened to the leaders.
At first, he said he didn’t care about where he was.
“I don’t know what The Chase looked like,” Mayer said after the race. “I don’t really care. I just want to go out there and perform at this point in the season with where we’re at. And I think we’re doing a great job of that. We just got to kind of execute the little things and put a full weekend together and we’ll be able to do good things.”
50 points?
“That’s a fantastic place to be,” Mayer said, his mood completely changing. “That’s about 30 points better than I expected. So yeah, just hats off to the guys. Obviously, we did a good job on the 41. … So, if that’s the case, it could be a brawl and we got a chance to be a part of it.”
So again, the math got tighter because Allgaier got crashed, Creed had an awful day and Kvapil failed to win … and they are well aware of how disappointing this night was for all of them.
“Just to start the Chase off like this has been pretty frustrating but blessed to still come out here and do this,” Allgaier said. “We’re going to go next week and bring another great race car to the racetrack and go try and win another race.
“Disappointing end to a day that I thought we were making some headway. Pit crew was on it. All the things were coming together. Just nothing to show for it.”
Creed had turned his Haas Factory Team No. 00 into the most prolific organization of the Chase until Sunday where he briefly took the lead and then went backwards. What went wrong?
“Everything,” Creed said. “I don’t know. Weird deal and we had no signs of that in practice. Qualified well, got the lead to start the race and I felt really good those first five or six laps of the race.
“And then I started to get a little free, but nothing concerning until I got really free. And then I got behind (Day) and didn’t want to race them too hard because we had a decent gap to third and I was just trying to not lose time. I knew kind of he was going to go by either way. Yeah, and just started to struggle more and more and I just bled really bad. Was really loose. And then also at the end of the run, I just didn’t have turn either.”
Conventional wisdom is that every contender will get one mulligan.
“I mean, I hope this is our only one, right,” Creed said. “So yeah, just a tough one all around. Weird because we came into the day with a lot of momentum and the day looked promising, but yeah, just have to move on, take it on the chin and go on to Charlotte.”
On one hand, Kvapil missed an opportunity, but so did everyone else not named ‘Corey Day.’ Those 15 points could
“Oh, of course,” Kvapil said. “I mean there’s many times throughout the season where I’ve left a track going, ‘man, I wish we could have this number of points that we should have had or could have had.’
“I think everyone kind of has that same mentality. I don’t think everybody’s had a perfect Chase so far or a perfect season. So just part of it, I feel like, like I said, I would love to be leading here the points leader by winning the race, but it is what it is.
“And as long as we just keep having good days of this and keep having strong cars and doing all the right things, having good pit stops, we should be able to get our points.”
And with his win, now Day has a real shot at this too, not that this season needs that to have been a success.
“My goal this year was to make The Chase,” Day said. “I wanted to win a race. I wanted to have consistency and thinking back on it, now that we’ve won three races, had plenty of top-5s, plenty of top-10s, we’re in the conversation to win a championship. That is far exceeding my expectations.
“So I’m very happy with this, very happy with my team. I owe it to them.”
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