Sam Mayer dominated a race on Saturday that he had no other choice but to win.
In his own words, ‘our car was unbeatable all day and I couldn’t do no wrong,’ and despite circumstances working against him inside the final dozen laps of the race, Mayer would not be denied and punched his ticket to the Round of 8.
Because he crashed out of both Bristol and Texas in the first two races of the playoffs, nothing short of winning would see him through into the second round. Not only did he win, he also led a career best number of laps (50) and drove through the field when a caution with 12 laps to go cost him the entirety of his track position.
He restarted sixth, avoided the crash on the front row between Jeb Burton and Justin Allgaier, and would find himself second behind Cole Custer on the final restart. Mayer had to nudge Custer out of the way, but again, this was his entire season boiled down to one green flag run.
Fortunately for him, this race was on a road course following his two other previous wins at Road America and Watkins Glen.
“We went into this weekend knowing there was no other way than to win,” Mayer said. “We kind of used our road course confidence to push us to go win. The conversations this week was ‘you have to get your crap together and you have to be perfect.’
“We did pretty much that today.”
Mayer winning from well below the elimination cutline meant that there was one less spot available on points. Sheldon Creed advanced on the final spot by just two points, two positions on the track, over Daniel Hemric.
But dramatically, Hemric went three-wide on the final corner with Parker Kligerman and Kaz Grala, needing both passes to overtake Creed in the standings. It came down to a photo finish but Hemric did not get either spot and the 2020 Xfinity Series champion was eliminated.
“I saw the move (Kligerman) was going to put on (Grala) and it almost played out the way I wanted it to,” Hemric said. “I could have run over them, I don’t know, and I wasn’t but I’m proud of the effort.
“We didn’t lose it today. We lost it at Texas.”
As a result, Creed survived and advanced with a 10th place finish.
“I wasn’t on offense at all,” Creed said. “That wasn’t fun. We were tight all day and in the race, I could be okay for four or five laps, and I would get tight and it was just hard to hold on for position. We couldn’t pass cars after a handful of laps beyond here or there.”
This was not his best showing between Bristol and Texas so he’s relieved it didn’t cost him.
“This is big for the team, having both cars through, but we stumbled in this first round. We didn’t do anything special. We stayed alive and finished all the races. Obviously, we can’t stumble our way through this second round. We need to have good runs and hopefully win Vegas or Homestead because Martinsville, you’ll never know what’s going to happen.”
Kligerman was eliminated but he says he enjoyed so much the pressure cooker of getting the last spot and then having a chance all the way through this first round. Ultimately, he would have advanced if he didn’t break a wheel hub in the playoff opener at Bristol.
“We scored the second most number of points today, so you can’t do much more than that,” Kligerman said.
“I love this. It’s not even pressure. It’s just cool. When you show up to the track and every lap matters, the preparation throughout the week, the heightened motivation and energy level. Everything matters and I loved that.
“I loved that I needed to go into this race and be perfect and 99 percent of it, I was.”
And that’s really what this format is about.
Mayer needed to win, and did, and that forced Kligerman and Hemric into needing more points than he would have if Mayer hadn’t won. It forced Jeb Burton to stay out on old tires and resulted in him making a mistake that wiped out Allgaier.
Fortunately for Allgaier, he had already advanced into the second round, but that was still the potential for five more bonus points that were lost. That crash also allowed Mayer to gain two more spots on his way back to the front.
It also gave Josh Berry, himself needing nothing short than a win but with a power steering issue, a chance to win the race and advance.
In the end, Mayer got it done, and it was all so very reflective of intensity of NASCAR’s playoff format, even at the Xfinity Series level. Â
Updated playoff grid
John Hunter Nemechek +37
Austin Hill +21
Justin Allgaier +17
Sam Mayer +2
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Cole Custer -2
Chandler Smith -11
Sheldon Creed -12
Sammy Smith -14
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.