By AMANDA VINCENT
Sheldon Creed opened the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Chase by winning the Fleetio 200 on Saturday night at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway. It was his second-career win and his second win of the season.
“Oh, this is everything to me,” Creed said. “I’ve been so close here so many times, and I’ve got to pick a place on the schedule to get a win, this is it. To be honest, I wasn’t real happy with the car the first run, and we worked on it all night, and J.T. (crew chief Jonathan Toney) and the boys just gave me kind of what I needed there at the end, and I was able to get away. Super proud of everyone at Haas Factory Team.”
Corey Day finished second, Brent Crews third, Sammy Smith fourth and Austin Hill fifth.
“Well, it was a lot of fun,” Crews said. “I got to move around a bunch. It was a hot day. It was a lot of fun learning a lot of different things. We tried a lot of different things in practice and just kept learning all night. At the end, when I was running everyone down, it kind of felt like Millbridge (Speedway). That was really cool. Blessed with the opportunity to come here and race. Wish I could have raced here earlier in the year, and maybe our result would have been a little different here, but it was a great learning day, and we had a super-fast No. 19 Mobil 1 Toyota GR Supra.”
Creed led throughout the final third of the 147-lap race, ultimately leading 53 laps. Justin Allgaier led a race-high 60 laps before a 17th-place finish.
The yellow flag waved seven times throughout the race. The final caution came out on lap 102 for an incident involving Joey Gase, Lavar Scott and William Sawalich.
Allgaier won the 45-lap opening stage with JR Motorsports teammate Carson Kvapil in second.
Kvapil started the race on the pole with Allgaier alongside in the front row in the second position. Allgaier took the lead on lap one.
Preston Pardus brought out the first caution on lap 34. Brandon Jones led a group of seven cars that stayed out during the caution. But on the lap-40 restart, Allgaier and Kvapil, after pitting, retook the top-two positions in the running order.
Anthony Alfredo won stage two at lap 90. Day was second at stage-end.
Alfredo took second from Allgaier on a lap-81 restart from a lap-74 caution for an incident involving Jeb Burton, Glen Reen and Mason Maggio. Alfredo, then, took the lead from Kvapil on lap 85.
Kvapil took the lead from Allgaier on a restart from a lap-60 caution for Daniel Dye and led a significant portion of the second stage.
The yellow flag also waved for Sawalich on lap 68 when Sawalich spun as a result of contact from day.
Alfredo finished the race in the sixth position. Taylor Gray finished seventh, Sam Mayer was eighth, Jeremy Clements ninth and Jones 10th.
