A first-lap accident collecting four Xfinity Series Playoff cars in this round’s opener at Kansas Speedway two weeks ago shuffled the championship standings significantly and really makes this week’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 at Texas Motor Speedway (at 4:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) even more significant in the title hunt.
The two winningest drivers of 2018 were caught up in the Kansas melee – six-time race winner Christopher Bell and five-time race winner, regular season champion Justin Allgaier among them. The result is a points shuffle that has early season championship leader Elliott Sadler leading the way again.
Sadler, who paced the championship field for 15 weeks early in the season, announced that this will be his final full season of NASCAR competition. And he’d obviously, like nothing more than to hoist a championship trophy on his way out.
He holds a one-point advantage on second place Daniel Hemric, who is three points up on third place rookie Tyler Reddick and 13 points ahead of fourth place Bell. Just behind and needing to break into the top four to advance to the Nov. 17 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway are Matt Tifft (one-point behind Bell), Allgaier (-5), Cole Custer (-23) and Austin Cindric (-43).
Although Sadler hasn’t won an Xfinity race at the Texas track – nor have any of the 2018 title hopefuls – he does have an impressive 10 top-10 finishes in the last 11 races – the other result, 11th. His best showing is a runner-up finish in 1998 but he was fourth-place in the 2017 Playoff race – first among the Playoff contenders.
Source: Holly Cain | NASCAR Wire Service
