RIDGEWAY, Va. – Carson Kvapil held off JR Motorsports teammate, Justin Allgaier in the National Debt Relief 250 at Martinsville Speedway to stay alive in The Chase hunt with one race remaining.

Kvapil started on the pole and led a race high of 121 laps, but in the closing laps, he had to be clutch on multiple late-race restarts with Allgaier trailing behind him. The 23-year-old was clutch in the final 68 laps as he went on to win his third victory of the season. He now trails in The Chase standings by 31 points.

“Just kind of had a rough race in-between the beginning of Stage 1 to the end there,” Kvapil said. “I just kept getting shuffled back and didn’t really do nothing right. We made the call to come in early, which in turn, made us stay out on older tires later. It just really worked out Rodney (Childers, crew chief) and then everyone on the team made the right call…Just super excited. Winning is always great, but finally getting one at a track where I feel like I’m really good at it is really cool.”

Jesse Love entered the race with a 19-point lead but with a 30^th-place finish, runner-up Allgaier has now taken over the lead in The Chase. He’s now atop the standings with a 22-point lead over Love. On Saturday night, Allgaier nearly had a perfect day as he won Stage 1, finished second in Stage 2 and nearly won the race.

“That last set of tires, we had to kind of push really hard to get through the field, and those cautions didn’t really help us out a whole lot to be able to get back through there,” Allgaier said.

Corey Day finished third and now trails in The Chase by 23 points. He was caught up in a crash early in the race on Lap 38 restart.

“I thought we were going to run probably 15^th at best just with – we were struggling with our car and to get more damage there didn’t really do us any favors,” Day said.

Rounding out the top-five was Brandon Jones and Sam Mayer.

Sheldon Creed finished sixth. He’s still alive in the Championship hunt but is now 42 points back.

“Forty-two is better than fifty,” Creed said. “We got a few points back tonight. We’re just going to let it rip on the fence next week and kind of see what everybody else does, and if I can win us the race and the championship, that would be awesome, but if not, it has just been a great year with everyone at Haas Factory and Chevrolet, all of our partners…”

Sammy Smith, William Sawalich, Brent Cres and Taylor Gray completed the top-10.

There were nine lead changes among five drivers.

The Chase race was filled with cautions, and the yellow flag was displayed on 12 occasions for 90 laps.

The most notable caution of the day was the last one on Lap 220, when Love crashed in-between Turns 1 and 2.

“We have obviously one goal, and there’s probably only for the most part, one avenue and one way to achieve that goal,” Love said. “That brings me a lot of clarity and obviously that means unless the 7 (Allgaier) has a DNF at Homestead, we have to go and win the race.”

The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series will crown a champion on Saturday, Nov. 7 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Live coverage of the race will broadcast on the CW Network at 5 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: Hunter Thomas/TheFourthTurn.com