{"id":29462,"date":"2016-08-15T12:16:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T19:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=29462"},"modified":"2016-08-15T12:16:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T19:16:06","slug":"ace-road-racer-justin-marks-seizes-first-nascar-xfinity-win-in-downpour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/ace-road-racer-justin-marks-seizes-first-nascar-xfinity-win-in-downpour\/","title":{"rendered":"Ace Road Racer Justin Marks Seizes First NASCAR Xfinity Win in Downpour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NASCAR
Sam Hornish Jr., driver of the #2 Rheem Chevrolet and Owen Kelly, driver of the #18 Tunity Toyota, lead at the start of the 4th annual NASCAR XFINITY Series Mid-Ohio Challenge at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on August 13, 2016 in Lexington, Ohio. (Photo by Jonathan Moore\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Road race ringer Justin Marks, driving the Chip Ganassi No. 42 Chevrolet Camaro, splashed his way to victory through some very treacherous conditions when storm clouds opened up at Saturday\u2019s Mid-Ohio Challenge 200 NASCAR Xfinity Series race.<\/p>\n

From there, the race lived up to its name, creating a serious ordeal for\u00a0drivers and crews who had\u00a0to put on rain tires, and make other quick decisions in the\u00a0rainy weather.\u00a0 Eventually, the rains stopped,\u00a0letting\u00a0teams switch back to dry slicks just past the halfway point.<\/p>\n

Then with 20 laps to go, storm clouds came back with a fury of rain showers and again had crews scrambling to change back to rain tires. All of this played right into Justin Marks\u2019 skillful driving hands.\u00a0 As many drivers raced to the front, Marks let them make numerous mistakes as he paced a clever tempo that might have not been the quickest, but the steadiest leading for 43 circuits.<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR
Justin Marks, driver of the #42 Katerra Chevrolet. (Photo by Jonathan Moore\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“These are as tough conditions as you can put drivers in,” said the 35-year old, Marks from a makeshift Victory Lane in the garage area.\u00a0 “It\u2019s just really hard on everybody when it\u2019s dry and wet and you don\u2019t really know what to do, so strategy plays a big role in it.\u00a0 You know, my specialty is road racing in the rain in these stock cars and I don\u2019t get much of an opportunity to do it so when that opportunity presents itself, you have to really take advantage of it and I about threw it away today.\u00a0 I knew if the race ended in the rain that we would have a real shot at winning it\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m just really happy.”<\/p>\n

Marks dedicated the win honoring his fellow Chip Ganassi Racing development driver and teammate, Bryan Clauson, who died last Sunday night from injuries in a sprint car accident in Kansas.<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR\u201cHe\u2019s a real American-hero race-car driver, Bryan was,\u201d said Marks, his voice cracking. \u00a0\u201cThey don\u2019t make\u2018em like that anymore.\u201d\u00a0 Every Xfinity team ran BC decals saluting the formidable racer.\u00a0 #BCStrong<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Pole sitter Sam Hornish finished second despite running off course many times but rebounded holding off Ryan Blaney at the end.<\/p>\n

“My hats off to Justin Marks,\u201d said an exhausted and wet Hornish.\u00a0 \u201cI generally held myself as a pretty decent rain racer and even given the opportunity there at the end, I couldn\u2019t do anything with him. \u00a0I would have to take massive chances with our car to be able to do anything and you still gotta pass him to keep up with him. \u00a0I wish we would have gotten a little more out of it. \u00a0In the dry, I feel like we could win, but Justin went out there and was just a monster in the wet.”<\/p>\n

Darrell Wallace Jr. had the lead off a restart with 14 laps left, then went off the track several times ending up finishing a frustrating 15th<\/sup> leading for seven laps.\u00a0 Another green flag waved with two laps to go with Marks holding off Hornish and Ty Dillon with his consistent pace to win by 3.707 seconds at the finish.<\/p>\n

Eight yellow flags slowed the field for 32 laps, more than a third of the race, with 13 lead changes among eight drivers.<\/p>\n

Ryan Blaney was third, followed by Dillon, Justin Allgaier, Erik Jones, Andy Lally, Brendan Gaughan, Elliott Sadler and Brennan Poole.<\/p>\n

Next up for the NASCAR Xfinity Series is night racing at the high-banked Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway for the running of the Food City 300 on Friday, Aug. 19. \u00a0Kyle Busch is the defending champion of the race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rain conditions proved challenging for other drivers, but Justin Marks took full advantage in this weekend’s Xfinity Series Mid-Ohio Challenge 200.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3424,3470,22],"tags":[4100,1294,1199,4792,127],"class_list":["post-29462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-news","category-event-coverage","tag-2016-nascar-xfinity-series","tag-justin-marks","tag-mid-ohio","tag-mid-ohio-challenge-200","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/MidOhio_NXS_Marks_VL_0813161_feature.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-7Fc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29470,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29462\/revisions\/29470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}