Yahoo Autos NASCAR Xfinity Series’ Championship 4 Motivated By Unique Mindsets
Reigning champion Cole Custer, first-time finalist Austin Hill say they simply want to execute well.
Justin Allgaier wants to erase memories of early-2024 disappointment.
A.J. Allmendinger wants to be at least a small part of team history.
Saturday’s race will start at 7 p.m. ET and is available on The CW, MRN Radio, and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.
When the green flag drops for NASCAR’s Xfinity Series finale Saturday night at Phoenix Raceway, the four championship contenders—reigning king Cole Custer, first-time finalist Austin Hill, ill-fated-at-Phoenix A.J. Allmendinger, and top playoff seed Justin Allgaier—have the same goal.
They all want to finish highest of the four who have survived 31 races to form the enviable quartet. But each has a distinctly different motivation.
• For Allmendinger, it’s reinforcing what he and his Kaulig Racing team have built.
• For Custer, it’s seeking back-to-back championships in what he has called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it’s delivering for Stewart-Haas Racing in its NASCAR swan song.
• For Hill, it’s reaping the benefits of doing homework.
• And for Allgaier – it’s recouping the glory that slipped through his fingers here in April.
After the Martinsville, Va., race last Saturday, a Sunday strategy session in the No. 00 Ford shop in North Carolina, five hours on the simulator Monday, and a cross-country flight Wednesday, all Custer has left to do is “to execute our weekend and go from there,” he said Thursday. “This has been a solid place for us, and we should be able to hopefully have a fast car and be there at the end of this race, because that's all that matters.”
Hill, driver of the No. 21 Richard Childress racing Chevrolet, said he “watched all the in-car cameras from last year with all four champ cars. Watched a lot of Allgaier’s, just because I know how good he is here. And he had an issue early last year and had to come back through the field—just seeing how he was working his way through traffic, that type of stuff. And then when I watched Cole's, I noticed that he was doing a lot of shifting towards the end of the race in [turns] three and four, which was a little eye-opening.
"I know that people shift here every now and then, but we've never been a team that does a whole lot of shifting. So we actually had to change our transmission ratios going into this weekend to allow us to run third gear in three and four and maybe even in one and two, depending on how the race transpires and really how much the pace slows down. So, we have all the plays in our playbook, and now we just got to go out and execute.”
At the Phoenix spring race, Allgaier set the pace for 52 laps and opened a three-second lead before a punctured left-rear tire ruined his chances for a third victory at the Avondale, Ariz., mile oval.
Allgaier confessed Thursday that “I'm not sure that I'm still over it,” although he said, curiously, that he “was actually more OK with it in the moment than I was the week after or two weeks after. And as the year progressed and we didn't have those cars. We had really fast cars, but we didn't have that situation—more than once. I let it fester a little bit.” But this week he told crew chief Jim Pohlman, “I've let that go.”
However, Allgaier said, “I also feel like it gives me a new passion to come here and win, right? I've been lucky enough to win here in the past and this gives me that much more motivation to come here and try to win. I don't know if that happens, but that's definitely something that I'm feeling.
“When I look back at the notes and I look back at what we've been doing over these last number of races, Jim's focus, whether he'll admit it or not, has been getting to Phoenix – not getting to Phoenix, but winning Phoenix,” Allgaier said. “And he's really been focusing on that for a number of weeks now. And he kind of left it up to me to get him here. I feel good about our program and where our car's at and what we're going to accomplish this weekend, because I know that I've got the best team and I know that when they put their heart and soul into it that anything's possible.
“I think that this sport gives and it takes away, and God's plan... it's not for us to question it... [but] it doesn't always fit the narrative that you want it to fit. For me in the spring, I felt like we had it, it was done, it was over with. I felt like that was what was meant to be,” the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet headliner said. He said he had left Phoenix with a mangled race car and a damaged psyche. But Allgaier, who was third in the finale last season and second the championship, was pragmatic.
“I've had a lot of different ways of losing it, and now I got to try to find what that one way to go win it is. And if we do that, we walk out of here as a champion,” he said. “The thing that's funny is I've watched drivers come before me, and I'm going to watch drivers come after me, that have success and run up front and get these opportunities that it just doesn't work out for 'em and they don't win a championship. Mark Martin on the Cup side battled for years as a guy that was an incredible driver and should have won five or six championships in my mind and never got one. Does that diminish my outlook on his career? Absolutely not. I think he was an amazing race car driver and did all the right things.
“So, for me, I'm going to walk out of this sport whether I'm a champion or not a champion, I'm going to walk out of it being proud of what I've accomplished and wouldn't have changed anything. I look back over all the times that I've been in this Final Four, there's not a single year that I would've done anything different. It's just not worked out. So this year, while I want it to be different, I have no guarantee that it's going to be different. There's nothing about it that makes a difference, other than I just have to go out there and execute at a high level,” Allgaier said.
Allmendinger echoed that: “If I win the championship on Saturday, it doesn't really change my life. I know I'm going back to the Cup series. But the joy of it comes from being able to bring trophies to the team. We've done a lot of it together.”
He said when he was hired by Roger Penske in 2012 and walked into that shop for the first time, he marveled at all “the Borg-Warners [from the Indianapolis 500], championship trophies, banners on banners on banners,” and he said, “You just want to be a part of just a tiny part. That's all I wanted was a tiny part of that history. Same thing driving for Richard Petty [2009-2011]. All the history's been written. You're just trying to be a small part of it.” At Kaulig Racing, the shelves, walls, and rafters were more spartan.
“We were able to start winning races, but together since that time, went from zero banners [now] there's almost 30 winning banners on the walls. So we built a history together, and I think that's why it's more special to me. So anytime we're able to win or I feel like I'm able to bring something to the team, that's what makes me happy, and that's what the factor of this weekend is all about, is trying to bring the ultimate trophy to the team.”
As for his Phoenix luck, or lack of it, Allmendinger owns it.
“Especially with Cole and Justin, they have a good notebook here. For whatever reason, we've never had a good notebook here, so we don't have anything to fall back on. So it's been a lot of work and a lot of grinding. And I guess we'll know more about two o'clock tomorrow when we're on the racetrack,” he said. Of his history, he said, “I think it's reality. You don't let it ever get out of your head, but we just put a lot of work into it, and that's all we can do. And I've studied a lot of video. I studied Cole’s in-car cam constantly from last year. We've done the homework, and we've put the effort in, so that's all we can ask for, right? I am not going to sit here and make you a promise like, ‘Oh yeah, we're going to be hooked up tomorrow in practice or in the race,’ but we've put the effort in. That's all we can do.”
Kaulig Racing President Chris Rice said the key is to “look outside the box.”
Allendinger said that task is simple: the box is “All the setups we've run have been terrible, so we've never hit on anything. So you got to try some different stuff, and we've done it. And we'll see if it actually correlates to real life. We're all in it. It's all of us. I think if you ask my crew, chief Alex, he hadn't done anything good here. I can promise you in the driver's seat, I hadn't done anything good here, so it's just about trying to be better.”
