Brandon Jones surged late in Saturday’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series event at Homestead-Miami Speedway, leading 25 laps and prevailing in a head-to-head battle with Carson Kvapil to take his second victory of 2026 – and the ninth of his career.

The driver of the No. 20 was nowhere to be found in the first half of Saturday’s 200-lap contest from Miami, Florida, until a caution during a cycle of green-flag stops in the final stage jumbled up the field, moving the Joe Gibbs Racing driver into contention.

Throughout the race’s final run to the finish, which lasted 55 laps, Carson Kvapil and Brandon Jones swapped the lead back-and-forth several times before Jones surged ahead and went on to win the race by nearly four seconds.

“I can say that we weren’t the best car to begin this race,” Jones said. “We were capable of running inside the top five and top 10 and we just consistently made better gains on it all night long. Our long run pace was really our strong suit tonight. Our short run, I thought we needed to catch up some, but this track can produce some long runs. We saw it tonight and we saw it in the Truck Series. Luckily, it played out for us.”

It was more than 12 seconds down the road, though, that Justin Allgaier, with a seventh-place finish, clinched his second championship in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series – becoming just the tenth driver to win multiple titles in NASCAR’s second-tier division.

Allgaier didn’t have the quickest car on the racetrack on Saturday, spending the majority of the evening running somewhere in the vicinity of fourth to eighth, but in the end, that was enough for the Riverton, Illinois-native to maintain a healthy points advantage over defending series champion Jesse Love.

“It means more than you’ll ever know. It’s obviously not the finish we wanted tonight, wanted to be in Victory Lane, but this team never quits,” Allgaier said post-race. “The first one was for me. The first one I really enjoyed. This one is for all these men and women standing back here. They have worked their tail off.”

There were a couple of scares for the JR Motorsports team, though. At the end of the first stage, Allgaier dramatically slowed on the racetrack, thinking he had a right-rear tire going down, and had to limp his car to the end of the stage. It ended up not being a flat, though, and Allgaier survived to the end of the stage, where the team was able to come take a look.

Then, with 62 laps to go, Allgaier made an unscheduled pit stop – this time, he had a flat tire. But, catching another good break, any repercussions of an early pit stop for the No. 7 team were not faced, as the final caution of the race came out five laps later, when Andrew Patterson crashed entering pit road.

“Tonight, it was a battle. Idiot driver packed the fence down too many times. I told you before the race I wasn’t going to do that, and I did it anyways.”

Carson Kvapil finished the race in second place, but without the extra points for winning the race, and a still solid finish by his teammate, the driver of the No. 1 fell short, finishing third in final point standings. Brent Crews finished the race in third place.

Jesse Love came home in the fourth position, falling just 14 points short of Allgaier, while Parker Retzlaff rounded out the top-five – after Sheldon Creed, who finished sixth, had a tire problem coming to the checkered flag.

Sheldon Creed had one of the quickest cars all evening long and had to settle for sixth, with Allgaier seventh, Austin Hill eighth, Sam Mayer ninth, and William Sawalich completing the top 10.

Coming into the weekend, the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series garage believed that Corey Day, who entered the night third in points, 23 back, was going to be the one to put up the biggest fight for Justin Allgaier, but a misjudgement by the Hendrick Motorsports driver on Lap 9 ended the No. 17s chances at a championship before they even began.

The 2027 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series campaign begins on February 20, 2027 at Daytona.