Daytona, FL. – On a very festive, American July 4th weekend race, America’s Independence wouldn’t be the only thing to be celebrated.
The 18th Annual Circle K Firecracker 250 was held in Daytona for the last time and it didn’t disappoint, there were the Daytona wrecks, lead changes and sounds of any other Xfinity Series race there is. The wrecks began in just the 9th lap of the race. An eight car wreck with the no. 7 and no. 90 car getting the worst of the crash.
There would only be 14 more laps before the next wreck would occur, causing four cars to spin out and the yellow flag make another appearance. The race would restart on lap 28 and the first stage would finish with the no. 16 car driven by Ross Chastain for the Kaulig Racing Team in the front spot.
Just two laps into the second stage there was another wreck that had the pace car come out and pace the racers for just four laps (32-35). There was then another 10 laps of clean racing before another incident happened on the front stretch of the super speedway. This involved four cars, the No. 2, 98, 7 and 39. The second stage would finish with another Kaulig Racing Team member in AJ Allmendinger in the No. 10 machine out in front..
The third stage was maybe the most dramatic stage of the race as the two biggest wrecks happened within 10 laps of each other. The first one spinning a total of 11 cars out and bringing the caution flag out for six laps. Just eight laps later the biggest most Daytona-esque crash of the race, taking out a total of 15 cars. One person that was able to slip through that cars sliding across the track was that No. 10 of AJ Allmendinger. That ended up allowing him to have a top three finish sitting in the third spot. In second place was the third car of the Kaulig Racing Team driven by rookie Justin Haley. Haley was also voted Rookie of the Race.
The top finisher was the man that won the first stage of the race, Ross Chastain. The first three finished all came from the Kaulig Racing Team that was just formed only four seasons ago.
We now look forward to the Coke Zero Sugar 400 on Saturday, July 6th at 7:40 PM.
Written by Zach Batkus
