Austin Dillon steals XFINITY Series victory after his brother wrecks

Austin Dillon held on to win a wild XFINITY Series race Friday night at Bristol Motor Speedway after his brother, Ty Dillon, wrecked while going for the lead down the stretch.

"Ty had a heck of a race going. I actually thought he was going to be the one fighting it out for the win," Austin Dillon said of his younger brother. "Man, it was just a war of attritiion. We had a really good car, maybe not the fastest car, but the one that won."

Kyle Larson dominated most of the race, but found himself in a three-way battle for the lead over the final 50 laps with fellow Sprint Cup drivers Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch.

Then, with 12 laps to go, Ty Dillon joined the party at the front of the field. At one point, Ty Dillon made a three-wide pass of both Keselowski and Busch for the lead.

But Dillon and Busch ultimately wrecked each other out of the race, leaving the lead to Keselowski, who also sustained damage to his car by first setting off the chain of events by clipping Busch in the rear as Busch tried to grab the lead. Busch then had a tire go down and hit the outside wall, where Ty Dillon could not check up in time and ran into the back of him.

Meanwhile, Austin Dillon lurked, waiting to pounce on every opportunity.

When Keselowski ran out of fuel during the final caution before the green-white-checkered finish, Austin Dillon inherited it -- and then held off Larson and the rest of the field on one final restart to earn the win that his brother couldn't.

"What can you say?" a disappointed Keselowski said after being credited with a 12th-place finish. "I guess it happens. We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be all weekend, but we had a lot of heart and fought as hard as we could.

"I was kind of playing jam car on the 18 (of Busch) and 42 (of Larson). They were really good and probably had the speed to win. I was doing all I could to hold them back and just ran out there at the end. I guess we had enough gas, but running under yellow it doesn’t pick it up so it ran out -- and once it runs out, these (XFINITY) cars don’t have all of the fuel-injection stuff and it just stops. I guess that’s the story.”

Well, it turned out to be a big part of the story. But not the whole story. Austin Dillon filled in the rest of the blanks.

"These short tracks have stumped me for a while, so to get a win here feels really good," Dillon said.

Dillon led just four laps, while Larson led 200 before being forced to settle for third. Justin Allgaier surged at the end to finish second. Elliott Sadler finished fourth and Brendan Gaughan came home in fifth.

Earlier, in a flash, Erik Jones went from battling for the lead to fighting to get back in the top five in Friday night's Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

But then it went from bad to much, much worse for Jones.

Impatient to get back up toward the front of the field after stalling his car on pit road and costing his No. 20 team several spots, Jones ended up wrecking his own Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Daniel Suarez, taking out both contenders for the XFINITY Series win on the 0.533-mile short track.

"I just made a mistake," Jones admitted. “I basically turned the 19 (Daniel Suarez). It’s unfortunate. I feel bad for Daniel and I feel bad for this team and my guys.

"The Reser’s Camry was really good and it deserved a good finish and was probably good enough to win. I just threw it away on that restart and tried to make too much happen too quick. Just trying to get back in line behind them before the others got there and I wasn’t clear. Just mad at myself."

It was a blow to both JGR teams, but will not affect their status as far as qualifying for the inaugural XFINITY Series Chase to the championship. Both are locked in by virtue of wins earlier this season. Jones owns a series-high three wins, while Suarez has one.