Anthony Alfredo Accomplishing a Lot With a Little in Xfinity

Anthony Alfredo rejoined Our Motorsports for the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season.

In his third full-time Xfinity season, he has one top five — tying his career-best of third at Talladega Superspeedway — and five top 10s. He currently is 15th in the standings, 95 points below the playoff cut line, with seven races left in the NXS regular season.

During the Nashville Superspeedway race weekend, Frontstretch spoke to Alfredo about running well for Our, the challenges of driving for a team with a smaller budget and whether he believes he can make the playoffs.

Mark Kristl, Frontstretch: You are 15th in points. Is that considered successful thus far this season?

Anthony Alfredo: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that’s a huge accomplishment for our team to be where we’re at and with the performance that we’ve had.

With that said, we want to make the playoffs, so that might be an unrealistic goal for a small team like ours. But truthfully, I believe we can win a race and punch our ticket. We still could point our way in if we have some more good runs and can close in on the guys ahead of us. We’ll have to see, but we’re certainly doing a good job this season and it’s gone as well as it could’ve thus far.

Kristl: Was the goal at the beginning of the season to make the playoffs or run top 20 and improve upon finishes?

Alfredo: The goal was certainly to run top 20 at the start of the year. But very quickly, we started to click off top 15s. We had five top 10s and won the Dash 4 Cash, so we kind of adjusted our expectations to be a top-15 team and not a top-20 team.

I mean that’s what we’re doing based on where we’re at in the standings, where we’ve been finishing, but it’s certainly going to be tough to take that next step and make the playoffs on points just knowing Xfinity starts at 12 instead of 16. We have a fraction of the budget, we have way less people, we have no alliance, no technical support, we do not have any data to lean on for information and cannot work on our cars in the simulator. We’re just racing the grassroots way. So the fact that we are even as high in the standings and have run as well as we are is something to be proud of.

Despite having Chevy Accessories as the primary sponsor on board his No. 5 at Portland International Raceway, Our does not receive any technical support from Chevrolet. The team does receive some data on its pit road statistics but nothing further.

Kristl: You rejoined Our this year after running 2023 for team owner BJ McLeod. First, why did you rejoin Our rather than venture elsewhere or stick with McLeod’s team?

Alfredo: This is a pay-to-play sport, unfortunately. At the NASCAR Cup Series level, you could earn a ride. But at the Xfinity level, you can go just about anywhere you want if you have the funding. I have some awesome sponsors behind me that were able to help make this deal come together with Our.

Chris Our and his family have put a lot into this program along with some of their own sponsors, so this is a step up from what I had last year. It’s still not a big team; we are a small team without a lot of help.

Just to have a team owner who is investing in myself and this team to be better, in combination with the partners that Team Dillon Management and I are bringing in, helps a ton.

Kristl: How much then was the Dash 4 Cash check helpful for your season?

Alfredo: It’s a huge help. We’re just going race-by-race one week at a time. And there’s not enough people or equipment, especially when you get into the summer swing, it’s tough, and we want to keep running this well, so to have that bonus helped us to keep doing what we’re doing.

Alfredo is funded for the season, but the team is spreading its smaller budget out throughout the season compared to the top-tier teams that continually run top-grade equipment. Sometimes Alfredo is running the same car within a shorter timespan compared to well-funded organizations that have plenty of racecars back at the shop.

Kristl: What change, if any, have you noticed from when you ran for Our in 2022 to now?

Alfredo: The biggest thing is just being a one-car team. We were spread way too thin at a three-car organization. Right now, we have just enough stuff to run a competitive one-car team. It was cool for Chris to want to have one competitive car before maybe expanding in the future. We got all our eggs in one basket, so we’re taking the best cars built by the best people to make this as competitive as possible and just get better each week.

I’m thankful for the opportunity and for him giving me the call. He said he wanted to go to a one-car team and try to win a race and make the playoffs. It means a lot that he wanted me to be his guy.

Kristl: You ran in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for David Gilliland, in Cup for Front Row Motorsports and now Xfinity for BJ and Chris Our. What is your affinity for smaller, underdog teams?

Alfredo: I’ve just learned a lot about the sport, not just on the track but the business side too. When you’re with a smaller team, there’s so much more that goes into these teams than people realize and don’t appreciate honestly.

Number one is performance. If we finish top 15, it does not mean we’re a top-15 team with the driver; it means we just won with what we had. We have different expectations. Yes, we’re all here to try to win the race. You have to have realistic goals. We’re not at the level of those large organizations. Speed and performance are all relative to what you have.

On the business side, it’s just doing a lot with a little. How do you maximize a significantly smaller budget to run as good or better than those big teams? That’s what we’ve been doing. I’ve learned a lot about what goes into that. How I, as a racecar driver, can maximize my equipment.

Ross Chastain has inspired me, in a way, because he outperformed the equipment he was driving, and I feel like I do a good job punching above my weight. I’ve got an awesome team that is giving me cars probably faster than what teams think we could be doing with our lack of resources. To maximize all that as a driver feels good. Now I’d just love to see what I could do if I did have it all like these bigger teams.

I’ve just learned to control what I can control and do my best on the driving front. And on the business side, I’ve built more sponsors that what I ever had before, so I’ve enjoyed that process. It’s just not an easy sport to compete in, and at the end of the day, you need to appreciate these smaller teams cause they’re a big part of the sport and it’s not just sunshine and rainbows in this garage for sure.

Kristl: To my surprise, despite you not having won an Xfinity race, you are incredibly upbeat. How do you manage to stay upbeat with different expectations?

Alfredo: That’s a great question. Honestly, I struggled with that badly when I drove for Front Row in the Cup Series. I look back at that now and I’m like, ‘I was trying too hard. I made mistakes because I didn’t realize I was in a 25th-30th-place car most weeks. I’m trying to run top 20 with it.’ Once I realized that toward the end of the year, I started putting races together where I was finishing better and had to understand that things are relative.

I especially learned that the most last year at BJ’s team and now appreciate every opportunity. You might not be where you want to be competitively, but it is a heck of a lot better than sitting on the couch at home. So that’s number one, to appreciate and be grateful.

Number two is those guys at the front of the field who want to win every week. They’re mad otherwise. We want to run in the top 15 every week. If we don’t, we’re upset about it but if we expect to win every week and we don’t, we’d be miserable. There are only a few opportunities every year that we have to do that.

Kristl: To make the playoffs, do you feel you must win to get in, then?

Alfredo: That’s the easiest way, right? That’s going to be tough. Daytona International Speedway, we could certainly win. We’ve been phenomenal at the superspeedways.

Maybe we could strategize a race to play in our favor. Really, if we could start getting some stage points and put together some solid finishes, we could potentially point our way in if guys on the bubble have their own issues.

Kristl: Other than Daytona, is there any other racetrack where you’re confident you can win?

Alfredo: Michigan International Speedway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we’re now running a different aero package similar to the Atlanta Motor Speedway engine package. Then again, balance, downforce and all those things that the top teams have figured out more so than us give them an advantage.

Those are track position races. We were able to do that at Atlanta, and so those are probably the second- and third-best opportunities for us other than the road courses. We were fast at Sonoma Raceway, we were solid at Portland, but we had mechanical issues at those tracks. Just controlling what you can control is what we need to continue to do.

While Alfredo does not have anything signed for 2025, he’d love to remain with Our full time in the Xfinity Series while continuing to make a handful of Cup starts for Beard Motorsports.

Alfredo: In my first two starts with them [Beard], we had a top 10 already and great speed. We’ve got another one coming up this year at Talladega. Hopefully, we can do more races this year; if not, certainly more next year. It’ll depend on what I’m doing obviously, but it’s been awesome to pull double duty a couple of times and accomplish a lot with a little.

The Next Gen car is so different, so more laps in it are good, especially when you perform well. Hopefully, it turns some heads and gets some Cup Series teams looking at me.

I’ve got experience in the Cup car, I’ve performed well, especially for me what I’ve done with these smaller teams. Bringing BJ’s [McLeod] team last year into the top 20 in the standings and then this year being a contender with Our, I’m proud of that effort and I hope people know how much we’re accomplishing with very little.