O’REILLY: Dawson Cram unable to make it off pit road for O’Reilly race in Gateway
by Brock Beard / LASTCAR.info Editor-in-Chief
SOURCE: hearts4heroes on TikTok
Dawson Cram picked up the 7th last-place finish of his NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series career in Saturday’s Nu Way 225 Powered by Bobcat and Sauced by Blues Hog at World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) when his #47 Hoods Home Center Chevrolet had engine trouble which prevented him from completing any of the race’s 180 laps.
The finish, which came in Cram’s 52nd series start, was his series-leading third of the season, his first since Chicagoland, six races ago. In the O’Reilly last-place rankings, it was the 19th for the #47, the 295th from an engine, and the 698th for Chevrolet. Across NASCAR’s top three series, it was the 61st for the #47, the 1,474th blamed on the engine, and the 2,063rd for Chevrolet.
This finish extends Cram’s lead in the 2026 LASTCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings over Kyle Sieg, J.J. Yeley, and Brad Perez, who came into this race with two last-place finishes, but trailed Cram on the tiebreaker.
Since his last-place finish at Chicagoland, where the Mike Harmon Racing team first partnered with Team Stange Racing, the #47 team continued to struggle over the next three races with Carson Ware and David Starr behind the wheel. Cram was to return at Daytona, where FUKU Energy Drink joined as sponsor, but he wound up the lone DNQ from an entry list at 39. He then endured a frustrating race last week in Darlington where he was unable to take a lap in qualifying to replace a faulty seatbelt, then in the race had to extinguish a fire caused by a glitching wiring harness.
Saturday’s race was run on Cram’s 25th birthday. He’d run a near-identical version of the Stange paint scheme from Chicagoland, this time with new backing from Hoods Discount Home Center, a home supply company operating out of the midwest. Representatives of the sponsor took their pictures next to the car in the Gateway infield for a video posted on TikTok. In opening practice, Cram ran 34th of the only 36 drivers entered in the race, which marked only the fourth short field in the 2026 season. His best lap was clocked at 34.935 seconds (128.811mph), or just under a second below Taylor Gray’s session-leading speed. But issues arose again before qualifying, which just like Darlington kept Cram from taking a timed lap, leaving him 36th and last on the starting grid.
As the field lined up for Saturday’s race, NASCAR handed tail-end penalties for unapproved adjustments to both 27th-place Lavar Scott in the #45 Strictly Friendly Ford, a one-race preview to Alpha Prime Racing’s switch from Chevrolet to Ford in 2027, and 30th-place Josh Williams, back in the #92 JF Electric Chevrolet.
CW’s leaderboard showed Sanchez behind Harrison Burton in the 35th spot. By the time the green flag dropped, Scott had dropped to the tail end of the field based on intervals, his Ford 3.609 seconds back of the lead behind Austin J. Hill, who was 3.346 seconds behind in the #53 Red Line Synthetic Oil Chevrolet for the Joey Gase effort. But by now, this was a battle for 34th and 35th.
Before the field rolled off pit road, there was a brief communication between Harmon’s crew about a push truck on pit road. This truck may have pushed Cram to the garage, as by Lap 4, he was shown off the track based on TheCW’s televised timing and scoring. There were no further radio transmissions over Cram’s channel for the remainder of Stage 1. Austin J. Hill remained in the 35th spot for nearly the entire stage except for Lap 13, when Taylor Gray spun out of the Top Ten while racing Rajah Caruth through Turns 1 and 2. Gray’s #54 Operation 300 Toyota moved up to 32nd by the ensuing restart, dropping Hill back to 35th. Hill held onto the lead lap until the final laps of the stage, when the leaders finally caught him. With no one else a lap down, Hill immediately got his lap back once the stage ended.
This led to a frightening accident at the entrance of pit road on Lap 49, which appeared to start between the #88 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet of Rajah Caruth and the #87 3Dimensional.com Chevrolet of Nick Sanchez. A chain-reaction stack-up spun both Caruth and Sanchez, steering the nose of Sanchez’ car into the right-rear of Brent Crews’ pitting #19 Younglife Toyota. By a matter of inches, two crew members of Crews’ team avoided getting pinched between both cars. Fortunately, the damage was confined to at least a half-dozen cars, many with crushed noses. Under an eventual red flag, Sanchez’ car, which sustained the heaviest damage, was brought to the garage along with the #51 Kingdom Truck Sales Chevrolet of Jeremy Clements and the #24 Dead On Tools Toyota of Harrison Burton.
On Lap 55, NASCAR declared Burton and Sanchez out of the race along with Cram, who was reported out due to engine trouble. Clements returned to the track around Lap 59, and by Lap 60 had cleared minimum speed. He finished in 31st, just outside the Bottom Five. Rounding out that group were Corey Day, whose #17 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet wrecked on the backstretch after his latest in a series of skirmishes with William Sawalich, and 32nd-place finisher Austin J. Hill, who fell out in the closing laps with electrical issues.
Kyle Sieg and Jeb Burton fight their way into the Top Ten
With four laps to go, Austin (E.) Hill’s #21 Bennett Transportation Chevrolet pitted out of the Top Ten, dropping him back to 29th at the checkered flag. At the time, the #28 Lynch Truck Center / Erection & Engineering Chevrolet of Kyle Sieg had clawed his way from 16th on the grid to 10th, then to 9th after Hill’s stop. Already with a single top-ten finish in this and each of the last four seasons, Sieg now has multiple top-ten finishes in the same year for the first time in his career. This is also his first top-ten run on a non-superspeedway – his previous five all came at Daytona, Talladega, and Atlanta. He finished just 24th in this race last year.
Hill’s pit stop also hoisted Jeb Burton into the Top 10, crossing the line 10th in his #27 FVP Verified. Proven. Chevrolet. This marked Burton’s third top-ten finish of the season and his second in three races, including Daytona last month. A hard crash in this race last year left Burton just 36th at the finish.
LASTCAR STATISTICS
*This marked the first last-place finish for the #47 in an O’Reilly race at Gateway.
THE BOTTOM FIVE
36) #47-Dawson Cram / 0 laps / engine
35) #24-Harrison Burton / 48 laps / crash
34) #87-Nick Sanchez / 48 laps / crash
33) #17-Corey Day / 133 laps / crash
32) #53-Austin J. Hill / 153 laps / electrical
2026 LASTCAR O’REILLY AUTO PARTS SERIES OWNER’S CHAMPIONSHIP
1st) RSS Racing (5)
2nd) Mike Harmon Racing (3)
3rd) DGM Racing x JIM, Joey Gase Motorsports with Scott Osteen, Jordan Anderson Racing Bommarito Autosport, Young’s Motorsports (2)
4th) AM Racing, Big Machine Racing, Haas Factory Team, Hendrick Motorsports, Hettinger Racing, JR Motorsports, Sam Hunt Racing, SS-Green Light Racing, Viking Motorsports (1)
2026 LASTCAR O’REILLY AUTO PARTS SERIES MANUFACTURER’S CHAMPIONSHIP
1st) Chevrolet (18)
2nd) Ford (6)
3rd) Toyota (1)
2026 LASTCAR O’REILLY AUTO PARTS SERIES DRIVER’S CHAMPIONSHIP
