Riley Herbst has captured his first career national series win at his hometown track.
Herbst started the race at Las Vegas at the rear of the field but finished 10th in stage 1. Herbst then won the second stage after passing teammate Cole Custer on the final lap.
Herbst lost the lead early in the final stage but took it back in dominant fashion. He went on to build up a lead of more than 14 seconds while setting a career-high mark in laps led with 103.
Herbst started the season with six straight top-10 finishes but missed the playoffs after six DNFs.
“I’ve been working on myself and everything I can control and I knew all I could do is all I could do and if there was a caution, there was a caution, and we’re gonna race them straight up,” Herbst told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns after the race.
“This year was such a failure that we didn’t make the playoffs. It’s so embarrassing to be in a car like this that doesn’t make the playoffs and walk in the garage each week with your head down, but Davin Restivo and all these guys on the 98 team told me to keep my head up and we’re gonna go win a race and that’s what we did. I can’t fathom it.”
This win, which took place at Herbst’s hometown track, made NASCAR Xfinity Series history. This was the largest margin of victory by an Xfinity driver at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The previous record at Las Vegas was Jeff Burton’s lead of 8.4 seconds over Michael Waltrip in March 2002. He started from the pole, led 148 laps and won.
