HOMESTEAD, Fla. – With a daring, three-wide pass coming to the white flag, Harrison Burton stole the win in Saturday afternoon’s NASCAR Xfinity Series Hooters 250 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Burton, who started from the pole by virtue of a random draw but hadn’t led a lap all day prior to the final restart with two to go, used an outside-inside switch to get underneath Noah Gragson going down the backstretch before drifting back slightly in turn three.
He then capitalized when Austin Cindric, who was rolling the middle of the race track underneath Gragson, washed wide on corner exit and pushed Gragson even higher – opening up the bottom lane again coming onto the front straightaway.
Burton dove under both Cindric and Gragson, edged the pair out in a three-wide scramble at the white flag, and then cleared Cindric off turn two on the final lap to take the lead for good.
The son of NASCAR on NBC analyst Jeff Burton beat Cindric back to the finish line by .179 seconds for his second Xfinity Series win of the year and seventh top five in nine races.
“I’m so excited. That’s so awesome,” Burton said in victory lane. “I gave away the lead on the first restart in the same position and I didn’t really want to do that again. I knew the 9 (Gragson) was going to drive in real deep and slide up, so I felt good about that. Proud of my guys, they worked on this thing so hard every run – made it better and better. What a day to get this Xfinity Supra to victory lane. They can keep on doubting this thing and we’re going to keep coming back.
“We were really tight the first little bit of the race there. We got better and better as the race went and I felt really pretty good about our car at the end. Made some adjustments for the short run there and my crew chief, Ben Beshore and my whole team, the No. 20 team just nailed it,” Burton added. “What an awesome, awesome race for us to come back from losing all those spots early and hitting the splitter early to winning now. I would have done a big smoky burnout, but we have to race this car tomorrow and I’m excited for that. It means we will hopefully be just as good.”
Behind Burton and Cindric, Gragson finished a disappointing third after leading five times for a race-high 83 laps. He held a margin of more than 10 seconds in front of the field prior to a game-changing spin by Ryan Sieg with seven laps left, which drew the last caution.
Anthony Alfredo came from 21st to record a career-best fourth-place finish, while Dale Earnhardt Jr. was fifth in his lone Xfinity Series start of the year.
Prior to Sieg’s spin, the final stage of the 250-mile race had run uninterrupted for 75 laps.
Sieg and Gragson split the two stage wins on Saturday afternoon.
To view complete race results, advance to the next page.