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Brandon Jones Holds Off Cup Series Stars At Darlington Raceway To Snap 98-Race Winless Streak

by racerx55 April 5, 2025 1 comment

By Matthew Thomerson

DARLINGTON, S.C. – Brandon Jones held off Chase Elliott and other contenders in the final laps to win the Sports Clips Haircuts VFW Help A Hero 200 at Darlington Raceway on Saturday, snapping a 98-race winless streak.

Jones grabbed the lead in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Menards/Turtle Wax Toyota after a late-race caution with 12 laps to go and ran away in the final laps to get his first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory since Martinsville in March of 2022. It’s his sixth career victory in the series and his second at Darlington Raceway. He last won at Darlington in September of 2020. On Saturday, Jones had to outrun some of the NASCAR Cup Series’ biggest stars.

“This is just one I wanted to make a statement in,” Jones said. “Christopher Bell, Chase Elliott; some extremely talented Cup drivers in this field today. Sam McAulay (crew chief), these Joe Gibbs Racing guys, this pit crew, unbelievable! That’s what it takes to win these races. Everyone needs to be bought in, everybody’s got to be at their highest level. I had a restart with some of the best there at the end and knew it was going to be tough on older tires and some of the guys up front. But what an insane couple years it’s been to get back over here; get back mentally to know I’m back in a really good race car to win races again. It feels really good.”

Chase Elliott had a fast car and ran inside of the top-10 for most of the day and lined up just outside the top-five on the final restart. Elliott was making his first NASCAR Xfinity Series start of the season. While Elliott ultimately had great speed much of the day, he just was not able to get by Jones in the closing laps. 

Justin Allgaier finished third, and it seemed like it was meant to be again for the JR Motorsports driver at Darlington, especially after securing a second-place finish in Stage 1 and winning Stage 2. A bad pitstop late in the race shuffled Allgaier back, and he was never able to get back on the top spot. 

Ross Chastain finished in fourth, and Carson Kvapil finished fifth. Rounding out the rest of the top-10 was Connor Zilisch, Christian Eckes, Nick Sanchez, Sammy Smith, and Sheldon Creed. 

Harrison Burton won Stage 1, and Justin Allgaier won Stage 2. 

The race saw 14 lead changes among nine drivers. Allgaier led the most laps with 56 laps led.

The caution flag flew six times for 36 laps.

Justin Allgaier leads the standings by 71 points over Sam Mayer.

Up next for the NASCAR Xfinity Series is the SciAps 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday, April 12. Live coverage will be on the CW at 5 p.m. ET. 

Photo Credit: Hunter Thomas/TheFourthTurn.com