Brandon Jones, Carson Kvapil on opposite ends of season finale at Homestead

It looked like Carson Kvapil was going to cruise to the win in Saturday's NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway and end his 2026 campaign with back-to-back wins. Instead, Brandon Jones took the race lead late and left Kvapil in the dust, beating him to the checkered flag by 3.937 seconds.

The move also moved Kvapil back from second to third in the final standings. Still, Kvapil, who pieced together a full-time schedule running various cars until running the entire Chase with the No. 1 JR Motorsports team, was happy about how his season went. 

Carson Kvapil, Brandon Jones dissect Homestead

"It's tough... jumping around from the 9, the 1, the 91, 11 weeks in a row of being in a different car, it makes it really hard," Kvapil told CW Sports. "I was able to learn quite a bit throughout the year. To have three different teams and some crazy circumstances going on, I learned quite a bit from it. 

"A lot of points left on the table. Overall, it was a really fun year. When we teamed up full-time with [crew chief Rodney Childers] and the whole No. 11 team it was really game on from there. I'm excited to get to next year with these guys."

Kvapil will be full-time with the No. 1 team at JRM in 2027.