Corey Day Gets First Career Win at Talladega

Corey Day won the Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway on Saturday, breaking through for his first career NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series win. The No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet finished 0.154 seconds ahead of second-place Brent Crews.

“It’s still very new to me,” Day said about superspeedway racing. “[There were] still a lot of times today where those mistakes at the beginning of the year came from not knowing.”

As the field entered Turn 1 on the final lap, Day drove in between the Haas Factory Team cars of Sheldon Creed and Sam Mayer. Day slid in front of Creed on the outside before Mayer was sent spinning to the apron by contact from William Sawalich. Brent Crews narrowly missed Mayer’s spin and surged his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to second on the inside.

Entering Turn 3, Day got out to a sizeable lead over the three-wide trio of Crews, Creed, and Jordan Anderson Racing’s Jeb Burton. After contact from Ryan Sieg put Burton into the outside wall, things turned into a mad dash for the lead before a race-ending caution flag came out. Day executed a block on Crews out of Turn 4 and was subsequently awarded the win when the yellow flag froze the running order.

Brent Crews’ Impressive Talladega Debut

“It just felt like there at the end I could make good runs and make good decisions,” Crews said. “I kinda could just go for it there at the end instead of trying to ride around and not crash. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.”

Crews entered the weekend having never competed in a superspeedway race at any level of NASCAR competition. He tackled that challenge head-on, bringing his Joe Gibbs racing team especially close to the win. A second place finish is Crews’ third straight top-five and the best finish so far in his seven-race O’Reilly Auto Parts Series career.

Allgaier & Kvapil Penalized

The race’s two stage winners, Carson Kvapil and Justin Allgaier, were assessed a rarely seen penalty on Lap 78 for an incident three laps prior. The two JR Motorsports Chevrolets were ruled to have exited pit road and merged into traffic in a way that impeded Jesse Love, Jeb Burton, and the cars behind them. Kvapil and Allgaier finished 22nd and 23rd, respectively.

“We were going up and the No. 1 [of Carson Kvapil] moved up and the No. 2 [of Jesse Love] made a hard cut left,” Allgaier said. “And so then at that point you’re kind of not sure where the rest of the field’s coming. We weren’t really at the fence, we were kind of in the middle. And so I went to go down to the bottom to get back out of the way of the cars coming and obviously they all came to the bottom.”

“I was pretty dejected when I first saw it,” added Kvapil. “It’s on me, I didn’t even know that was a rule. I feel like I see that happen a lot, right? Usually it helps break up the pack. Honestly, just didn’t even know.”

Points Outlook

Following his first win of 2026 Corey Day sits fourth in the standings, 145 points out of the lead. Justin Allgaier has a 105-point cushion over second-place Sheldon Creed, followed by Jesse Love at 141 points out.

Rajah Caruth presently holds the 12th and final spot in the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Chase. He has 14 points over Ryan Sieg, who was in line for a top-five finish until his contact with Jeb Burton on the final lap. Sam Mayer is next back at 14th in points, 27 points behind Caruth.

Brent Crews is now up to 15th in points, having missed four races that he was ineligible to run before his 18th birthday. With 13 races remaining until the Chase begins, Crews is 43 points out of the final Chase spot.

Race Results