TEXAS – John Hunter Nemechek, of Joe Gibbs Racing (Toyota), made the winning pass with seven laps remaining in Saturday’s Andy’s Frozen Custard 300 NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Texas Motor Speedway
Nemechek, 26, made the winning pass with seven laps remaining to punch his ticket to the next round of the series playoffs.
Nemecek’s fantastic recovery came after his car popped out of third gear on the final restart of the race. and increase his series-best and career-best single-season total to seven victories.
His No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led only 38 of the day’s 200 laps, but he managed to get around Big Machine Racing’s Parker Kligerman and race off to a victory – his second at the 1.5-mile Texas track and his seventh of the season.
His margin over second-place Parker Kligerman was 1.005 seconds.
There were 12 caution periods for a total of 65 laps. Only 15 of the 38 drivers in the race finished on the lead lap.
Stage 1 Winner: Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Stage 2 Winner: Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports (Chevrolet)
SHR Race Finish:
- Cole Custer (Started 3rd / Finished 6th; Running, completed 200 of 200 laps)
- Riley Herbst (Started 10th / Finished 37th; Accident, completed 2 of 200 laps)
SHR Points:
- Cole Custer (3rd with 2,117 points)
- Riley Herbst (13th with 706 points)
Custer’s sixth-place finish locked him into the Round of 8 of the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs. He earned his 18th top-10 of the season and his sixth top-10 in seven career Xfinity Series starts at Texas.
“We maximized our day really well with stage points and I’m really proud of our team,” said Cole Custer, driver of the No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang. “That’s not easy and now we can go into the Roval with less stress. We didn’t have the best car today or quite the speed we wanted. On that last restart, we were trying to go for the win and the 48 (Parker Kligerman) just drove through me. I couldn’t really do anything else there and then it made me lose a bunch of momentum. We did a great job as a team and now we’re locked into the next round so we can go to the Roval and fight for a win.”
This was Custer’s second straight top-10 at Texas. He finished eighth in his prior Xfinity Series start at the track in November 2019. Custer finished fourth last Friday night at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
He finished third in Stage 1 to earn eight bonus points and second in Stage 2 to earn nine more bonus points.
Custer led three times for 28 laps to increase his laps-led total at Texas to 44.
“On the pace laps, I was warming up the tires pretty aggressively and I just felt like we were starting on super low pressures,” Riley Herbst, driver of the No. 98 Monster Energy Ford Mustang. “I felt like that because of how much flop I had in the sidewalls and the tires. I landed in turn three, and it just went down on the right front tire. I tried to chase it up and I thought I saved it and slowed it down enough, but when I continued to chase it, I obviously ran out of real estate, so I’m truly disappointed. I should’ve learned from the pace laps and probably pitted before green so I could’ve had a chance to race, we’ll see what happens. I don’t know, this is just a frustrating year, for sure. We’ll go to the Roval and try to compete for a win.”
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule is the Drive for the Cure 250 presented by BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina on Saturday, Oct. 7 at the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval. It is the third race of the Xfinity Series Playoffs and the final race of the Round of 12. The race begins at 3 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by NBC and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
