Gotcha! Late pass good for Xfinity Series playoff-race victory at Kansas Speedway

Aric Almirola surged to victory late in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series playoff-opening race at Kansas Speedway.

Almirola’s No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led just 16 of the 200 laps in the Kansas Lottery 300. But Amirola won by bypassing Cole Custer on the 197th of 200 laps.

Almirola’s second win of the season in a part-time role was his first at the 1.5-mile Kansas City track and the sixth of his Xfinity Series career.

Custer, the defending series champion, placed runner-up in the No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, 0.660 seconds back at the checkered flag. Chandler Smith placed third, with rookie Connor Zilisch fourth and Sheldon Creed fifth.

A handful of playoff-eligible drivers found trouble in the 300-miler, most notably top-seeded Justin Allgaier. The 38-year-old veteran lost control exiting the second turn on the 70th lap during a Stage 2 restart.

He made heavy contact with the inside retaining wall with the front of his No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet. After that he limped along in an effort to continue, but a second wall scrape ended his day early with a 36th-place finish in the 38-car field.

Sammy Smith, a teammate of Allgaier’s at JRM, also endured a pair of wall-brushes in Stage 1, and title hopefuls Austin Hill and Riley Herbst came together at the end of Stage 2, with Herbst taking the worst of their contact.

The Xfinity Series will continue the Round of 12 next Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

As for here in Kansas, still to come Sunday at Kansas Speedway is the main event of the weekend: the NASCAR Cup Series Hollywood Casino 400, presented by ESPN BET.

Sunday’s race is set to start at 2 p.m.