Dale Earnhardt Jr. dominates XFINITY Series race at RIR
Dale Earnhardt Jr. dominated the ToyotaCare 250 Saturday at Richmond International Raceway, going to Victory Lane in the XFINITY Series for the first time since July of 2010.
Earnhardt, a Sprint Cup regular who runs only a handful of XFINITY races each year, had made 21 series starts since taking that checkered flag at Daytona in 2010 before winning Saturday's event.
It also was Earnhardt's first career win in one of his own JR Motorsports cars, a fact that seemed to at first escape him after claiming the checkered flag in his No. 88 Chevrolet.
"Oh, it is? Well, that makes it a little bit better," Earnhardt told FOX Sports after being informed that it was his first win in a JR Motorsports-fielded car.
For the second week in a row, the scheduled 140-lap "main" race was preceded by a pair of 35-lap heat races, one of which was won by Erik Jones and one that was won by Ty Dillon. Their rewards for winning the heat races were starting positions on the front row for the main event -- but it was Earnhardt who grabbed the lead on Lap 18 and led pretty much the rest of the way.
The only time over the final 122 laps when Earnhardt was not in the lead came on a restart with eight to go, after Justin Allgaier beat Earnhardt, his JR Motorsports boss and teammate, off pit road. Allgaier lined up on the outside of the front row next to Brennan Poole, who was the leader ever so briefly after his team was the only one that elected not to pit.
That turned out to be a disaster -- not so much for Poole, who hung on to finish 10th, but for Allgaier, Jones and others when Poole could not get going on his older tires. Earnhardt dove to Poole's inside and Allgaier was on his outside, putting Poole in the middle. Poole appeared to get loose and grazed the right-rear quarterpanel of Allgaier's car, setting off a chain reaction that ruined the days of Earnhardt's top challengers, Allgaier and Jones.
Allgaier went on to finish 35th. Jones, who led 17 laps early in the race, finished one spot better in 34th.
"When the 48 (of Poole) stayed out, I thought, 'I've got to go to the inside here. He's not going to get a great restart on those tires,' " Earnhardt said. "And he spun his tires ... I tried not to drive up into him and I don't think I got into him. I think they just got into each other and caused a heck of a wreck."
Allgaier questioned Poole's decision to stay out on old tires.
"We drove down into (Turn) 1 there and I don't think he expected it to have as little grip as it did," Allgaier said. "Then obviously Dale was on his inside. It was a frustrating end to our day. We ran second the majority of the day. ... I felt like we could have at least finished second and possibly won the race on that last restart.
"It's just a shame. I know it's the end of the race, but there's no time for that."
That also set up a green-white-checkered finish with Earnhardt the leader once again, with him lined up on the inside of the front row this time and Ty Dillon in second on his outside for the final restart.
Earnhardt jumped to the lead one final time and beat Dillon to the checkered flag by 0.21 seconds to take the victory after leading a race-high total of 128 laps overall. Ty Dillon ended up second, taking the $100,000 XFINITY Dash 4 Cash bonus as a result of being the top finisher of a foursome that also included Poole, Allgaier and Jones.
Elliott Sadler, Daniel Suarez and Austin Dillon, Ty's older brother, rounded out the top five.
"We were a little loose at the end," Earnhardt said. "We got a little loose getting into the corners and I thought Ty was going to get to me. He tried to get to me down there in (Turn) 3, when we both drove into the corner wide-open. I ran into him a bunch at Bristol (a week earlier), so he owed me one.
"But we had a great car."
