JR Motorsports kept up their dominance of the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series with Kyle Larson claiming the giant ice cream cone with a win in Saturday's Andy Frozen Custard 340 at Texas Motor Speedway.
FORT WORTH, Texas -- JR Motorsports kept up their dominance of the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series with Kyle Larson claiming the giant ice cream cone with a win in Saturday's Andy Frozen Custard 340 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Larson led 93 of 200 laps to get his second NOAPS win in four starts this season. Like when he won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, Larson didn't take control until the second half of the race. After leading two of the first 104 laps, he led 91 of the final 96 laps and won.
Doing that wasn't easy. In the final 17 laps, JR Motorsports teammate Justin Allgaier decimated Larson's lead and closed to his rear bumper using the outside lane.
"[I knew] his next move is gonna be pack air on me so I was bracing for that and getting lower to allow me to chase it up the track. I haven't seen the replay but I think he was trying to pack air and for how much entry speed he carried, I was surprised he didn't. He never touched, which I was thankful for, but that was good, hard racing," Larson said.
Allgaier started on the pole, led the first 53 laps and won the first stage but came up three tenths of a second shy of his first Texas NOAPS win.
"Just the last restart, the first three or four laps, I was too on the splitter and then once we did get to him [Larson], he blocked all the lanes I needed... Without contact, I didn't know how I was going to by him. Contact's great but it just as easily puts the guy behind you in the catbird's seat... I'm just frustrated we didn't come out of here with a win," Allgaier said.
Larson and Allgaier led a 1-2 finish for JR Motorsports. They led a total of 195 of 200 laps with Connor Zilisch leading three times for the other 48 laps they led.
However, Zilisch came home with a 21st-place finish, one lap down. After winning the second stage, he led at the start of the final stage but faded to 11th within 30 laps of leading.
Immediately after falling out of the top 10, he popped a right-front tire and pitted, knocking him off of the lead lap for the rest of the race.
"I'm not sure what happened. We were good in the first two stages and got tight in stage three and eventually blew a right-front [tire] so we'll have to go back and look at what went wrong," Zilisch said.
The only driver who came close to passing a JRM car for the lead Saturday was Brent Crews. He came close in stage two as he moved to the inside lane of Zilisch and Larson as they raced side-by-side in turn three. Crews slid sideways underneath the two JRM drivers and produced one of the most memorable, on-edge moments of the 2026 season.
"I had a big enough run to clear both of them and had so much speed. They were on my door tight and got sideways. I would've liked to have split through there quicker," Crews said.
Although he dropped behind the JRM duo and Sam Mayer, Crews finished fourth and claimed the $100,000 Dash4Cash bonus.
After missing four NOAPS races and then catapulting into his series debut this season, he is only 12 points below the Chase cutline with an incredibly quick start to his career.
"I think a lot of it comes from the discipline as a kid growing up. My dad had me in a lot of different cars growing up... with the disciplines between adapting, I didn't have a choice but to try to pick it up as fast as I could. So getting in these cars at new tracks is new but the discipline is similar," Crews said.
Above the cutline, Parker Retzlaff is ninth in the standings, 54 points to the good, after a landmark fifth-place finish in Saturday's race.
"During the green flag run, we got into the top-five," Retzlaff said. "It's the best I've done in my career... I don't know what it is we're gonna need to win but getting top-fives and getting good runs we can build on is what we need to do.
"It's the best opportunity I've ever had."
Retzlaff has now matched the career-best season total of top-five finishes (2) in his career and is one behind his career-best season total of top-10 finishes (seven in 2023, six so far in 2026).
Ahead of Retzlaff and Crews, Sam Mayer finished third for his second top-five finish of the season. He is now above the Chase cutline again, by eight points, with Crews lurking.
TOP-10 FINISHERS (LAP 200): Kyle Larson, Justin Allgaier, Sam Mayer, Brent Crews, Parker Retzlaff, Sheldon Creed, Austin Hill, Brandon Jones, Jesse Love, Jeremy Clements.
The Nos. 9 and 26 cars will lose pit selection at Watkins Glen due to a loose lugnut.
The race started off slow with three cautions in the first 18 laps.
For the second week in a row, a NOAPS race started with a lap 1 crash. This time, Corey Day crashed off of turn two, along with Taylor Gray, William Sawalich and others. Gray was upset with Carson Kvapil, who got into him and referenced previous run-ins and vowed possible payback.
One of the more bizarre moments of the race happened under caution when Mason Maggio turned his car around right in front of the pace car, nearly causing an incident.
The run of cautions was capped off by a multi-car crash involving Brad Perez, Austin Green and Lavar Scott.
After this, the bizarre incidents didn't end. Kyle Larson, on the outside of the front row, tried crowding Justin Allgaier on the inside. However, that didn't stop Allgaier from pulling off a great restart and pulling away while Larson floundered.
STAGE ONE TOP-10 (LAP 45); Justin Allgaier, Connor Zilisch, Kyle Larson, Brandon Jones, Brent Crews, Sheldon Creed, Sam Mayer, Austin Hill, Jeremy Clements, Parker Retzlaff.
In stage two, Justin Allgaier picked the inside lane and couldn't hold off a charge by Connor Zilisch to the outside lane to take the lead. Allgaier settled in second while Larson, Crews and Mayer, in a bid for $1 cones for everyone, rounded out the top-five as the stage settled in.
In the final laps, Crews jumped to second and got to Zilisch's bumper right at the finish of the stage.
STAGE TWO TOP-10 (LAP 90): Connor Zilisch, Brent Crews, Justin Allgaier, Kyle Larson, Sam Mayer, Brandon Jones, Parker Retzlaff, Austin Hill, Sheldon Creed, William Sawalich.
One caution fell in the final stage for Rajah Caruth crashing off of turn two on lap 180. Caruth finished out of the race in 34th.
Justin Allgaier leads the points standings by 121 over Sheldon Creed heading to Watkins Glen next Saturday. Here are the points standings and results:
