CHARLOTTE, N.C. — AJ Allmendinger received a gladiator sword from Bristol Motor Speedway, dubbed “The Last Great Colosseum,” so he didn’t necessarily need more artifacts to commemorate his latest race win. But Allmendinger said that his team’s president, Chris Rice, offered to drop the No. 16 Chevrolet chassis off in his driveway.
“Because that was about all that was left of the car,” Allmendinger said Tuesday, referring to the severely damaged Camaro that the Xfinity Series driver crashed to an overtime victory and regular-season championship last Friday.
Allmendinger declined Rice’s offer for the car, he said, which indeed looked as close to a chassis as it did to a race-winning ride given its precariously hanging bumper. He crossed the finish line just ahead of Austin Cindric as their cars slid locked past the flag for one of the most exciting NASCAR race finishes this year.
Fans simultaneously cheered and booed, and Cup drivers marveled at the lower-level series ahead of their event at the same Tennessee short track the following day.
“I’m jealous of those guys,” Aric Almirola said before Saturday’s Cup race. “You watch Cindric and Sam Mayer have contact and blast the wall and still keep running 1-2.”
“With our cars, we’d have tire rub, cut tires and you’d either be wrecked from your tire rub or you’d have to come down pit road immediately to fix it,” Almirola said. “Our cars are just not as durable.”
Almirola is among the Cup drivers hoping that the composite bodies of the Next Gen car debuting in 2022 will remedy some of the contact sensitivity and allow teams to “race more like what we’ve seen with the Xfinity cars — to where they can kind of beat and bang.”
“They can get in the fence and it doesn’t ruin their day,” Almirola said. “They keep going and keep carrying on with their race, so I think that’s something I have my eye on.”
It’s not only the drivers’ potentially elevated sense of confidence in equipment durability that has made Xfinity a must-watch racing series this year. As retired full-time driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. was reminded after his 14th-place finish during a one-off event he entered at Richmond this month, “All these guys got so much heart.”
“They just race so hard,” Earnhardt Jr. said on NBCSN. “And you can tell they’re trying to prove themselves.”
The notion of drivers and teams “proving themselves” has long characterized the stepping-stone series that typically precedes the highest Cup level for NASCAR’s competitors. It has also made for compelling, high-contact racing this year, which Xfinity playoff drivers said they expect to continue into the seven-race postseason that starts this Saturday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Twelve drivers are entered in the playoffs with Allmendinger — a former full-time Cup driver in his first full-time Xfinity season — and Cindric — the defending series champion slated to move to Cup next year — tied in points atop the leaderboard. JR Motorsports drivers Justin Allgaier and Noah Gragson are ranked third and fourth with two wins each during the regular season. Justin Haley and Daniel Hemric, respectively, follow in points. Then it’s Jeb and Harrison Burton, cousins competing for different teams, followed by Myatt Snider, Brandon Jones, Riley Herbst and Jeremy Clements, in points order.
Some drivers have already announced plans for next season, with at least three — Cindric, Harrison Burton and Justin Haley — slated to make the move to a full-time Cup schedule in 2022. Veterans Allmendinger and Allgaier, as well as Gragson, will return to race in the Xfinity Series for their current teams on a full-time basis next year. For others, future plans are uncertain as they enter their most important set of races this season.
“I feel like these next couple weeks I’m auditioning for my career,” Jeb Burton said during Tuesday’s Xfinity playoff media availability.
Burton, a part-time journeyman in the series for most of his career, competes for Kaulig Racing. He cited a decision by sponsor Nutrien Ag Solutions to pull out of NASCAR after this season as part of what has left him searching for his next opportunity.
“Without them, I wouldn’t be in this position or Kaulig Racing, so appreciate that,” Burton said. “But it is a bunch of uncertainty.”
Burton earned his first Xfinity win in 69 races this year and is among the drivers trying to capitalize on a playoff opportunity. The situation could lead to desperate moves, especially during the cutoff race at Charlotte to close the Round of 12 (Oct. 9) or the next cutoff event at Martinsville (Oct. 30) to determine the Championship 4. That’s not far from the moves drivers made as recently as last Friday as they battled for a postseason berth or regular-season title.
“The end of the race at Bristol really put in perspective for me how important all of this is to all of us,” Allgaier said. “All of us that are fighting for this championship in 2021, there wasn’t one of us that wasn’t just laying it all on the table at the end of that race and trying to go for broke.”
Allmendinger, who said he left a decision regarding his schedule next year up to Kaulig Racing executives (“I’m just doing whatever they want me to do because I just love being a part of this organization,” he said), didn’t elaborate on the difference between the current Cup and Xfinity cars. He has entered four road course races in the Cup Series this year and won one of those events at Indianapolis. Allmendinger declined to speak to the Cup cars’ handling based on the different aero packages for the oval tracks, but he commented on his experience in the Xfinity cars.
“They are so enjoyable to drive,” Allmendinger said. “They slide around. They don’t have a lot of downforce in them. They have a good amount of horsepower, so yeah, no matter whether we’re racing at Martinsville, we’re racing at Michigan, these cars are a handful to drive and it makes it a lot of fun.”
Added Allgaier: “I’m hopeful that these playoffs are a lot of fun, but I think that they’re gonna be really intense. And you’re gonna have to set sail and throw caution to the wind and leave it all out there.”
The first race of the Xfinity playoffs is this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. on NBCSN.
