John Hunter Nemechek wins Tennessee Lottery 250 at Nashville Superspeedway
In the Tennessee heat, John Hunter Nemechek prevails over the NASCAR Xfinity Series field at Nashville Superspeedway. Nemechek won the second stage on his way to earning the checkered flag today.
This is the second Xfinity Series victory for John Hunter Nemechek. He won earlier this year at Las Vegas. It has actually been a tough go of things in Nemechek’s nine Xfinity starts in 2024. It hasn’t always been top-5 finishes and wins.
Today, in the Tennessee Lottery 250, it did end in a win.
John Hunter Nemechek is the winner in Music City!
Ty Gibbs dominates first stage at Nashville
Starting from the pole, Ty Gibbs was lights out in the first stage. Dominance on another level. He put almost four seconds between himself and second place by the time the stage ended. A fully green stage, there was plenty of racing, but also a lot of time for drivers to fall back and others to move forward.
There were no cautions to save drivers struggling or give them a chance to take tires and swap strategies. In fact, that would be a defining feature of the entire race. Five Cup Series drivers in this race, Gibbs was joined by Tyler Reddick John Hunter Nemechek, Noah Gragson, and Ross Chastain.
Without much effort, at least seemingly, Gibbs was able to hold off drivers like Cole Custer, AJ Allmendinger, and Nemechek to take the first stage all for himself. Too bad he doesn’t earn points in this series, so it was mostly for show.
Nemechek hits back in second stage
After pit stops and a slight reordering of the first stage results, Ty Gibbs was on the wrong side of things. Finding himself in dirty air, Gibbs was not as fast as he was in the first stage. Things were a lot harder for the 19-car and its ability to move forward in the field.
Again, no caution flags in this stage. Just green flag runs. Drivers like John Hunter Nemechek did well in these situations. Meanwhile, drivers like Gibbs did not do as well. The leaders were more or less the same, Custer was in the mix, Austin Hill was lurking in the background.
It was Nemechek who came out with the stage win, though. Both stages, and the playoff points, were stolen by Cup Series drivers. They don’t earn any points, but Gibbs and Nemechek did block the Xfinity drivers from earning a full 10 points and a playoff point for winning the stage.
John Hunter Nemechek takes advantage of late restart
With the long green flag runs in this race, it was hard to tell when and if a caution flag would come out. In the final stage, Cole Custer was able to get out to the lead and hold it. He was ticking of laps and it felt like he was waiting for his trophy and checkered flag, it was only a matter of time.
Then, with 53 laps to go, disaster. Ty Gibbs and Justin Allgaier were racing each other hard. Allgaier eventually tapped Gibbs on the left rear and spun him out and into the wall. Admittedly, neither driver really recovered after the incident.
The wreck and ensuing caution did allow for Nemechek to take advantage. JHN drove hard on the restart, took Cole Custer three-wide and grabbed the lead from him. From there, he didn’t give it up and drove away to the win.
Late in the race, John Hunter Nemechek had debris on his grill. It allowed Chandler Smith to slowly reel him in, but it wasn’t enough once Nemechek got it off the front of his grill. The end of this race went green for 47 laps and Nemechek came away as the winner.