TRACK – Kansas Speedway (1.5-mile oval)
NXS RACE – Kansas Lottery 300 (200 laps / 300 miles)
TUNE IN – CW, MRN, SiriusXM Channel 90 at 4:00 p.m. (ET)
- Coming off a top-five finish at Bristol Motor Speedway, Carson Kvapil will make his first NASCAR Xfinity Series start at Kansas Speedway this weekend.
- Kvapil made one start on the 1.5-mile oval in 2023 in the ARCA Menards Series, where he qualified third and finished in the runner-up position.
- The 22-year-old rookie has made four starts on traditional 1.5-mile tracks in the NXS, with a best finish of 10th coming earlier this year at Homestead.
- Going into the second race of the NXS Round of 12, Kvapil currently sits fourth in the points, 16 points above the cutline.
- Justin Allgaier heads into the second race in the Round of 12 for the NXS Playoffs as the second seed, 53 points above the cutline with two races remaining in the round.
- In 15 starts in the NXS at Kansas, Allgaier has earned four top-five and 10 top-10 finishes, with a best finish of second coming in this event in 2022.
- Two of Allgaier’s three NXS wins this season have come on tracks 1.5-miles in length and occurred in back-to-back weekends at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway in March.
- In his NXS career on tracks between 1-2 miles in length, Allgaier has earned a combined 16 wins, 89 top-five and 161 top-10 finishes in 258 starts, with his most recent win coming at Nashville Superspeedway earlier this season.
- Sammy Smith will head to Kansas this Saturday for the fourth time in his NXS career.
- The Iowa natives best finish with the NXS on the 1.5-mile oval is eighth, coming in 2022.
- Smith also competed at Kansas with the ARCA Menards Series in 2022 where he qualified fourth and finished third.
- TMC Transportation will share the TV panel at Kansas with CMC, a steel recycling and fabricating company which started 110 years ago in Dallas, TX and has since grown into a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of facilities around the world.
- Connor Zilisch enters the second race of the Round of 12 in the NXS Playoffs Saturday at Kansas as the points leader. Zilisch has a 32-point edge over second-place teammate Allgaier and sits 82 points above the cutline. He has held the championship lead for three consecutive races. The No. 88 team leads the owner standings by 37 points.
- Zilisch will make his second NXS start at Kansas on Saturday. The driver of the Carolina Carports Chevrolet finished fourth in his first Kansas NXS start in September 2024. He has one ARCA start at Kansas, a second-place finish last September.
- Zilisch led the most laps at Bristol (twice for 98 laps), the eighth time this season he has led the most laps in a race. He also captured the Xfinity Fastest Lap Award for the fifth time in 2025. His average running position at Bristol was 2.24 – best of all drivers.
- The Mooresville, N.C., native has enjoyed remarkable success this season. Entering this weekend at Kansas, Zilisch has racked up nine victories in 26 starts, including seven wins in the last nine races and owns the record for most wins by a rookie.
Carson Kvapil: “This No. 1 team has brought fast cars to the mile-and-a-half tracks this year, we just don’t have the finishes to show for it. We took the off-weekend to recharge, prepare and plan to continue on with our momentum from Bristol to get one step closer to moving on into the Round of 8. We need to stay consistent and will keep chasing that win for Johnny Morris and everyone at Bass Pro Shops and Clarience Technologies.”
Justin Allgaier: “We’ve been really close at Kansas in the past and I know that Jim (Pohlman, crew chief) and everyone on this BRANDT Professional Agriculture team are going to give me a great car this weekend that will be capable of running up front. We had a really solid run to kick off these playoffs at Bristol and if we can just keep executing that way in Kansas, we should find ourselves in a really great spot to move on to the next round.”
Sammy Smith: “I’m ready to get back on track with my No. 8 TMC Transportation team. It was good to have a weekend off, especially in the playoffs when the pressure is at an all-time high. We have some ground to make up in the points, but it’s nothing this team can’t overcome.”
Connor Zilisch: “Kansas is one of my favorite tracks. You’re up on the fence and it’s just a unique racetrack with low banking, low grip and it races really well. There are a lot of different ways you can go around that track and that definitely makes it one of the more unique racetracks that we go to. We were able to cleanly get through Bristol and I think we’re in a good spot heading to Kansas this weekend.”
JRM Team Updates
- JR Motorsports at Kansas Speedway: JR Motorsports has competed at Kansas Speedway a combined 61 times in the NXS since 2006. In those starts at the 1.5-mile oval, the organization has recorded one win, 17 top-five and 36 top-10s. The average finish is 13.4.
- Souvenir Rig: JRM drivers Carson Kvapil, Justin Allgaier, Sammy Smith and Connor Zilisch will be signing autographs at the JR Motorsports / HMS-Byron/Bowman souvenir rig on Saturday, Sept. 27 from 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. CT.