Gray Steals Kansas Lottery 300 Win!

Taylor Gray Celebrates HIs Kansas Lottery 300 Win With His Team (Riley Ogle | Motorsports Today)

KANSAS CITY, K.S. – For the first time in NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series history, the series took on the infamous Kansas Speedway in the spring, Saturday, April 18th. Joe Gibbs Racing's Taylor Gray went on to win the race, earning his first win of the season.

Last season, Kansas served as a playoff race in decently hot temperatures, but this race was the complete opposite.

Qualifying Friday was postponed due to severe thunderstorms that saw multiple tornado watches around the Kansas City Area. When the green flag was thrown Saturday, the temperature outside was a brisk 58 degrees fahrenheit making lane viability critical.

JR Motorsports driver Carson Kvapil was credited the pole as Connor Zilisch won at Bristol the week previous in his car. Starting outside was his technical teammate William Byron who slotted in to race the JR Motorsports #88 entry at Kansas after Kyle Larson raced it the weekend prior at Bristol. Unfortunately both drivers tangled early.

On lap 2, Kvapil found himself in the middle of a three wide situation that found himself being hooked in the left rear by Byron. Kvapil then spun head on into the backstretch wall before being contacted by Viking Motorsports Driver Parker Retzlaff, which sent Kvapil into a tumble.

After a few flips and sliding on his lid for most of the straight away, Kvapil's car landed on its roof. He had to wait for the car to be flipped back over to finally exit his vehicle, but luckily the structure held up strong and Kvapil was okay.

That was not the only wacky incident to happen though, as later on in the first stage Richard Childress teammates Jesse Love and Austin Hill had a tangle with Hill getting the shorter end of the stick. Hill's day was ended from the tangle as despite spinning onto the apron Joe Gibbs Racing driver William Sawalich could not slow down in time hitting Hill ending his day.

Sawalich was able to continue after the incident and actually rebounded to a 20th place finish mitigating what could have been a race ending incident.

As for the lead, Sawalich's teammate Brandon Jones dominated the first two stages of the race. Jones won the race previous in 2025, and it became clear he was the car to beat. As fate had it though, bad luck was the only thing that would stop Jones from winning.

The race went green all the way for the final 95 laps. For Jones on his final stop his crew would suffer an uncontrolled tire. This resulted in a pass through penalty with Jones recovering to finish the race 8th.

As for the final pit cycle, Haas Factory Team's Sheldon Creed assumed the lead for the majority of the final green flag run until his last stop. Creed pit with Jones, barely beating him out of pit road, but behind Taylor Gray was playing chess as they opted to undercut.

The strategy found Gray in the lead with all race with 48 laps to go. Creed trailed Gray by just over four seconds, but eventually closed in to tighten up the race for the lead late.

With 5 laps to go Creed cut the gap down to under a half a second, but with the mix of lap cars and simply just not enough laps, Creed was unable to get to the bumper of Gray to make a move for the win. Gray held on to get his first win of 2026 uncontested.

OTHER NOTABLES:

JR Motorsports had a day filled with bad luck and incidents, but saw another consistent race from Justin Allgaier. It had been a while since he put a complete race together at Kansas without incident as you have to go back to September of 2022 to find the last time he finished in the top 10.

Allgaier started the last run over 6 seconds behind Gray. Over the run Allgaier found himself in the mix with Creed for the win finishing 1.8 seconds back at the checkered , simply running out of time. Allgaier crossed the checkered in 3rd and exits Kansas with a 131 point lead over Creed.

Speaking of Creed, he also won the Dash For Cash with his 2nd place finish netting him and his Haas team $100,000!

Lastly it was a gutsy day for Cole Custer who raced with SS Green Light Racing. At the drop of the green, Custer started the race in 36th. At the end of 200 laps and also showing great long run pace, Custer crossed the checkered with a 7th place finish. Prior to Kansas SS Greenlight's best finish was of the season was 13th at Circuit of the Americas with Alex Labbe. This result was much needed for the team that has come a long way since DNQ'ing at Daytona to open up the season.

RESULTS:

Leaderboard Provided via NASCAR Timing and Scoring

UP NEXT:

The NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series faces the traitorous Talladega Superspeedway next Saturday, April 25. The race will be ran at 3:00 PM and coverage of the race can be found both on the CW and MRN. Last season Austin Hill won the first race at the superspeedway. He seeks redemption after big time misfortune at Kansas.