It was a grind for Sammy Smith to even make the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs and now a victory at Talladega leaves him one more advancement away from the championship race at Phoenix Raceway next month.
“Just a great team,” said Smith. “It’s been a really tough year … Man, it’s been a while. It’s been a struggle. I’m very happy to be here and looking (forward to) getting better on these ovals and road courses.”
Smith was the final seed in the initial Round of 12 this past month and even entered this round facing must-win odds at 23 points below the cutline following the race at Kansas last weekend.
He drives for Dale Earnhardt Jr. and picked the brain of the two-time Daytona 500 winner entering the week.
“Yeah, we did,” Smith said. We sat down with him Wednesday and it wasn’t a whole lot, just kind of some of the stuff he would do in those situations, but man, it feels really good to win again.”
Playoff Grid
Sammy Smith (Advanced)
Chandler Smith (Advanced)
Cole Custer +37
Austin Hill +37
Sheldon Creed +32
Jesse Love +22
Riley Herbst +20
AJ Allmendinger +7
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Justin Allgaier -7
Shane Van Gisbergen -10
Sam Mayer -13
Parker Kligerman -16
Who is safe next week?
It’s a good week to be a Smith.
Both Sammy, who won the race, and Chandler, who scored enough points on Saturday have advanced into the Round of 8. They are in no matter what happens and can only improve their Round of 8 seeding with a win or stage wins at the Charlotte Roval.
A decent place
Cole Custer got crashed at the end but also scored 10 stage points earlier in the race to offset it, which ultimately made for a ‘straddle water’ kind of day.
“That’s the best way to put it,” Custer said. “I felt like today was about scoring stage points, which we did, left some on the table but don’t do anything stupid.”
He finished 26th because of the crash but as the regular season champion, he had a good margin of error to begin with and still does going into the Roval.
“There is so much risk in this race and we just tried to keep ourselves in the game and I feel like we did that today and now we just have to manage our race again next week and just avoid having something else like this happen twice.”
Sheldon Creed finished fourth and aside from spinning after taking the checkered flag leaves Talladega in a pretty safe spot.
“Yeah, overall, a pretty smooth day for us,” Creed said. “Just tried to avoid the chaos and the crashes, and kind of do what we did, get points and finish good. I lined up fourth on the restart and knew we’d have a good shot at it. I was trying to get the No. 8 (Sammy Smith) the best push I could and we kind of got too far away from the rest of the pack and I was trying to block coming to the white flag and just fell back there. To be able to make a few moves that last lap and get myself back into contention.
“And then, yeah, got spun across the line. Overall, good day. I think we’re plus (32 points) going into the ROVAL. Hopefully we can just go and have a smooth day and hopefully maybe get our first win next week.”
Jesse Love and Austin Hill were also involved in a crash but Hill had a lot of stage points and Love nursed his damaged car to a sixth place finish to avoid any worst case scenarios as well.
Riley Herbst finished third and in real time was bummed about not winning but he is also in a really good place headed to a track that he called ‘a bad track that they’ve made worse.’
Who is in trouble?
Sam Mayer‘s misfortune was fortune for everyone else on the playoff grid as the JR Motorsports No. 1 failed rear height inspection at Talladega, moving him from 10 above the cutline to 13 out. That means Mayer very well might need to win next week now to advance or get a lot of help around him on the playoff bubble.
It’s not impossible for Justin Allgaier to point his way in but he is going to need some help next week at the Roval to overcome a disastrous two-month stretch that has bled into the first round of the playoffs where he lost the regular season championship and then fell from the top seed to well below the cutline after crashes at Kansas and Talladega.
“I was in an okay spot there, on the outside, (Chandler Smith) pushed me really hard into 3 and I got really, really loose,” Allgaier said. “It was the first time, I had been that loose all day. I had to chase it up the hill and we had nowhere to go when that happened on the frontstretch … Now just need to go to the Roval where all the calamity happens and have to win a race.”
Parker Kligerman was also involved in the crash, the second of his day, and and rallying to 12th was actually a better day than he realized in real time because the Mayer disqualification bumped him from a 26 point deficit to now just 16.
“I’ve only done a real preliminary run through of it two weeks ago,” Kligerman said of the reconfigured Roval. “It wasn’t completed yet. This week, I’ll do a lot of Roval running and try to get familiar with how different it is and what it effects. I don’t think it will change our set up any but I do need to familiarize myself with it.”
Shane Van Gisbergen scored a top-10 at Kansas to open his first playoff run with a lot momentum and positivity but it all went away with this crash that also involved Austin Hill, who drove away from it with considerably less damage.
But now Gisbergen, who has won three of the four road course races this season, will need to have a really strong day on the final one of the year.
“Just got to show up with the fastest car we can, prepare well, and hopefully do okay,” the typically understated Van Gisbergen said.
Van Gisbergen should be considered the favorite, but he will need to fend off teammate AJ Allmendinger, who is literally undefeated in the Charlotte Roval between his Cup and Xfinity starts. With the Mayer disqualification, Allmendinger is now above the cutline instead of below it but may need to prevent an SVG or Mayer win if that would be enough to drop him below the cutline.
“This year has gone so bad for me on the road courses,” Allmendinger said. “There is for sure some confidence going into the Roval for sure but all I can do is give it hell and our best.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
