(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
SPARTA, Ky. — Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Kentucky Speedway.
(Note: Writer not present at the track this weekend. Observations are from afar.)
Who Won?
Cole Custer. He surged to the lead in the final stage and dominated for a series-best fifth victory of 2019.
Who Claimed the Stages?
Christopher Bell
Top Stories
Top Trio
When the checkered flag waved at the end of Friday’s Alsco 300, there were just five NASCAR Xfinity Series competitors remaining on the lead lap. Cole Custer led the way for his fifth victory of 2019. Christopher Bell followed a short distance back in second. Tyler Reddick slotted in a distant third.
The rest of the field found themselves lapped, or desperately trying to avoid it. Michael Annett and Chase Briscoe managed to keep from going a lap down, but at race’s end the top three competitors of NASCAR’s second series again stood tall.
Custer, Bell and Reddick have taken the Xfinity field by storm over the past four months, combining to win 12 of the year’s 17 races. Only Ross Chastain has been able to stop the group’s recent reign, with the trio accounting for wins in 10 of 11 races.
That’s left the group to compete amongst each other. Custer’s win on Friday gave him the edge in victories, with five triumphs to Bell’s four. The Californian has taken off in recent weeks, scoring more NASCAR national series wins in the past 14 races than in the five preceding seasons.
Custer hopes the race served as a sign of things to come for the No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing team.
“This weekend showed what we can do,” Custer said. “Even in practice we felt like we were just a tick off the (No.) 20 (of Bell) but made adjustments to make our car better in the race and had smart adjustments throughout the race.
“It is a matter of getting better and better throughout the year and I think we can continue to make our car capable of winning. I think we can compete for wins wherever we go if we stay consistent and do our homework every week.”
Bell was the driver to beat early in the night, scoring wins in each of the opening two stages to become the first 2019 driver with double-digit stage wins. But in the end the Oklahoman was left disappointed with a runner-up result that felt underwhelming.
“We just didn’t do a good enough job keeping up with the race track and making sure that we were the fastest car for the entire race,” Bell said. “We’ve just got to get better. The (No.) 00 is faster right now.”
Reddick came home a distant third, but in doing so kept the edge that favors him most – a full-race lead in the regular season standings that will yield 15 playoff points when the playoffs begin.
NASCAR’s newest Big Three continued to push each other in Kentucky, and Custer emerged with the trophy and pride at race’s end. With five wins in the past 13 races, some would think that Custer is the favorite to claim the title at season’s end.
Just don’t tell him that.
“I don’t think anyone is the favorite at this point,” he said. “We still have a handful of races until the regular season ends and then we have the playoff races. You have to look at each race as an opportunity to gain points. We don’t look at Homestead. We still have 12 or 15 races to go before then.”
The Best of the Rest
On a night when the Big Three of NASCAR’s second series stood tall once again, a smaller, but equally important story began to play out in the field.
The battle for fourth.
In NASCAR’s modern playoff era, four drivers make the trek to Homestead-Miami Speedway with a championship opportunity each November. So in a year where three drivers dominate, like the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series saw in 2018, the rest of the playoff field has a chance to snag the fourth title opportunity, surprise the leaders and steal a title for themselves and their team.
Joey Logano did just that last season, toppling the original Big Three with a controversial bump at Martinsville Speedway and a spirited drive to victory at Homestead. Now the playoffs hopefuls in the Xfinity Series are working to do the same.
Michael Annett was the top driver outside of the Big Three in Kentucky, and also serves as the only other playoff contender with a victory after his season-opening triumph at Daytona. Teammate Justin Allgaier appeared poised to run better during the early stages of the race, but was relegated to seventh at race’s end after a mid-race speeding penalty.
“That was the most frustrating part of the night,” Allgaier said. “I knew it, too. As soon as I turned off the banking and onto the flat I started wheel-hopping. Unfortunately it just wasn’t enough. I knew it, and I was waiting for them to say something, but at that point we were already having a bad pit stop.
“It didn’t matter at that point. We just had to deal with it and go on.”
While Allgaier lacked the happiness of a good result, he was left optimistic about JR Motorsports’ pace. Once a dominant team, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s squad has gone winless since Annett’s Daytona breakthrough. Allgaier saw gains in Kentucky that made him optimistic about that changing in the future.
“Tonight I think was a great indication of where I feel like we’re making improvements,” Allgaier said. “We had all four cars inside of the top-eight tonight. I feel like as a whole, our. company ran better tonight than we have on the mile-and-a-halves especially. Don’t get me wrong, we still needed some speed to keep up with the 00 and 20, but I felt like we were on the right track.”
Another driver working to build towards a battle with the Big Three is one of their teammates – Chase Briscoe. The summer months have seen a slew of disappointing results for Briscoe and the No. 98 SHR team, all while Custer’s gone on his current hot streak. But Briscoe returned to form with a top-five run at Kentucky.
It wasn’t a victory like his teammate had earned. But it was a step in the right direction, leaving Briscoe content with the result at race’s end.
“This is where we should be running all year long,” he said afterward. “Earlier this year we were running top-five every week, but these last three or four races have been really tough on us. We just haven’t had anything go our way, truthfully. It felt good to come back and show where we should be running.”
His regular season hasn’t gone to plan, but Briscoe believes his No. 98 team is capable of mounting a playoff run this fall. The key in his eyes revolved around the team reaching their potential – which he believes they’ve yet to do.
“How we’ve been running right now, I feel like we’re right on that borderline from the fourth to sixth range,” he said. “But honestly I don’t feel like we’ve ran to 75% of our potential. I feel like we can be way better, and when we do run to our full potential we can easily be those top four guys.”
There are others to watch as well. Austin Cindric. Noah Gragson. Perhaps even Ryan Sieg, Justin Haley or John Hunter Nemechek.
The Xfinity Series playoffs feel largely certain, but one spot is certainly up for grabs. If the current trends continue, then everyone not named Bell, Custer or Reddick will be striving for it over the next four months.
Brandon’s Blown Hopes
One of Friday evening’s bright spots saw his race go up in smoke before the sun could set.
Brandon Jones and the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team proved themselves to be contenders in the early stages of the Alsco 300, rising to the lead on a couple occasions and challenging for positions inside of the top-five through each of the opening two stages.
One day removed from a heartbreaker in the Gander Outdoors Truck Series — where Grant Enfinger got loose under him and wiped the pair out while battling for the lead — Jones found himself stranded with an early exit again after his machine began encountering motor issues in the race’s middle stages.
The Georgian limped his car to pit road, but was quickly told that his night was over. On an evening where he led 12 laps, Jones was relegated to a 30th-place result.
“That’s twice this weekend that we’ve been leading the race and something has taken us out – whether it’s been mechanical or an incident on the race track,” Jones said afterward. “What are you going to do? We’ve been running first both races this week and that’s what we’ve got to do, at least on my behalf.
“I hate it. We had Menards and we had Swiffer on the car this weekend. It was going great for us. I think we had the car to win the race tonight, but all in all, these guys worked really hard and I think they’re all behind me and we’re going to get this thing figured out.”
Jones has spent the past two season with Joe Gibbs Racing overshadowed by teammate Christopher Bell, who claimed two stages and fell just short of a fifth 2019 win at race’s end. Friday’s fall out dropped Jones to 12th on the playoff grid, with six DNFs in 17 races.
Those setbacks have left Jones well behind his fellow playoff hopefuls with the regular season winding down. But the 22-year-old is keeping a positive mindset, with hope that his team can manufacture a playoff run.
“It’s all about realizing where you’re running when this stuff is happening,” Jones said. “We continue to run top five. We continue to lead laps. This pit crew I had tonight was awesome. They were really getting me up front there. You put all that together and we’re going to keep going. These guys got a lot of momentum built up behind them so I think next week will be good.”
Other Notes
- Justin Haley’s first race back in Xfinity after his shocking Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win at Daytona International Speedway was a ho-hum affair. The Hoosier suffered damage in an early run-in with Austin Cindric and never fully recovered. Instead he was left enduring a “boring” run. “I don’t know how long that green-flag run was,” he said. “But man… I could have fallen asleep.”
- Speaking of Cindric, the Team Penske prospect had a difficult evening after backing into the outside wall. But his No. 22 team made the most of it, rallying for a 14th-place run that keeps him in the hunt for fourth in the regular season standings – the ‘best of the rest’ behind Xfinity’s Big Three.
- Ryan Sieg’s phenomenal start to 2019 fizzled out over the late spring and earlier summer, but Sieg returned to form with a ninth-place run in Kentucky. A consistent few weeks in the postseason could make Sieg a spoiler for one of NASCAR’s power teams this fall.
