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Eyes on Xfinity: Who Can Jumble Up the Playoffs?

The NASCAR Xfinity Series hasn’t been on track since July 20.

Those of us who’ve been going through withdrawals during the Olympic break were treated to a wild appetizer with the NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway last weekend.

Austin Dillon won the race in the most controversial fashion.

I won’t spend too much time here breaking it down. My colleagues at Frontstretch have done plenty of that. Dillon’s theatrics came as part of a win-at-all-costs mindset. The Xfinity Series has six races left before its playoffs begin. Could we still see someone come out of nowhere to win a race and steal a playoff spot, with or without the controversy?

Yes. Yes, we could.

The way Dillon ran at Richmond may not have an exact correlation in the Xfinity Series, because while the Cup teams are all using essentially the same cars, the Xfinity teams do not have that level of parity. Still, when we go to superspeedways, road courses or even short tracks, there is precedent and opportunity for someone to strike gold and blow up the playoff bubble picture.

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Let’s take a look at the lay of the land first, and then we’ll go race by race and analyze who could pull out an upset win.

Twelve drivers will make the playoffs. The top eight in the playoff standings are virtually locked in by way of winning one or more races. Then it’s AJ Allmendinger in ninth, but holding a very safe buffer of 102 points to the cut line. After Allmendinger it’s Sheldon Creed in 10th with a 69-point buffer.

The three drivers most squarely on the bubble are Parker Kligerman (46 points above), Ryan Sieg (3 points above, and Sammy Smith (3 points below). Brandon Jones still has an outside chance to point his way in, but it would take a heck of a run because he is 69 points below Sieg for that final spot. All drivers below Jones are in absolute must-win territory.

Anthony Alfredo leads that group, followed by Brennan Poole, Parker Retzlaff, Josh Williams, Jeb Burton, Leland Honeyman, Jeremy Clements, Kyle Weatherman, Ryan Ellis and Blaine Perkins.

Matt DiBenedetto is above Perkins in the driver standings, but he missed the first five races of the season and is not eligible for the playoffs because of it. A win for DiBenedetto is a big long shot, but its within the realm of possibility.

Even if he did pull out a win, the likelihood of NASCAR granting a playoff waiver is very low, due to the precedent they set a few years ago with Grant Enfinger in the Craftsman Truck Series.

If we include Jones, that puts 11 full-time playoff eligible drivers in must-win territory, with six races left on the schedule. Let’s take a look at the last six races of the regular season.

This weekend, the series heads to Michigan International Speedway. This is not a track that is primed for an upset winner. Last year, Retzlaff finished ninth at this race and Burton finished 10th. No other bubble driver finished any better than Alfredo in 18th. Retzlaff and Burton are teammates, and I’d give Retzlaff a slight edge for chances to pull an upset here, but he would need to catch lightning in a bottle. He would need high attrition and some kind of highly unusual strategy play to go just right.

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Friday night, under the lights, Xfinity racing, Daytona International Speedway. That’s exactly what you’ll get on Friday, Aug. 23. This is the track where any one of those 11 drivers could conceivably win a race. We’ve seen some incredibly high attrition at times on the plate tracks.

Clements won a race at Daytona as recently as 2022. Alfredo finished third earlier this year at Talladega Superspeedway and he could be a real threat even without high attrition. Burton has the skills to get it done at a track like Daytona. His two career wins came at Talladega to go along with three career top fives at Daytona.

He could be a factor and figures to work with his Jordan Anderson Racing teammate Retzlaff to get to the front of the pack. But with both JAR drivers needing a win, would they stick together on the last lap?

You may recall the finish at Talladega earlier this season.

On the final restart, it looked like we were going to have a big upset win. But a lot of the underdog drivers who were in position did not work well with one another, and Jesse Love scored an easy victory with fumes in the fuel tank.

I wrote about it after the fact. The Daytona race will be the first opportunity to see if drivers like Poole — who had a great opportunity to win that race — picked up any cues from that experience up front in crunch time. Any one of our 11 must-win drivers could pull one off here, but Jones and Williams are probably the most likely.

Jones could get help from his JR Motorsports teammates if he can make it through the race to be in the hunt at the end. When I heard from Sammy Smith for a recent story, he pointed out how the whole JR Motorsports organization is focused on getting all four of its drivers into the playoffs.

Only problem is, if they were to focus on getting Jones the win he needs, it could come at the expense of Smith who would then need to leapfrog Kligerman or Creed, which is possible but looks like a big mountain to climb right now.

Williams has had such a disappointing season compared to preseason expectations. But Daytona could be his moment in the sun. His Kaulig Racing team already has two of its drivers safely in the playoffs (Shane van Gisbergen and Allmendinger), so you would think the team will make a concerted effort to help Williams get the best possible result. Kaulig seems to be off from their peak level of performance a couple years ago, but they still have the ability to run up front at the superspeedways.

Darlington Raceway follows Daytona. That is probably the least likely place to see an upset win. However, Regan Smith did win a Cup race at Darlington in 2011 by staying out on older tires and being just fast enough to keep the lead in clean air. Alfredo feels like a pretty similar comparison with how competitive he has been this year to where Smith was in his 2011 season with Furniture Row Racing.

Atlanta Motor Speedway may look like a good place for a long shot to get to victory lane, but don’t be fooled by the restrictor plates. The waning grip levels since the repave and tighter corners did not allow for much passing when the series was there in the spring. That said, a guy like Burton could try to get some track position and hang on for dear life, and maybe it would work.

I’m not sure if guys like Honeyman, Clements, Weatherman, Ellis, Perkins or Poole have the raw speed to do that at Atlanta. So if anyone is pulling it off here, it’s likely Jones, Williams, Alfredo, Burton or Retzlaff. How funny would it be if Williams scored his first win at Atlanta, where he was famously fined for parking his car at the start-finish line in protest of a penalty in the spring race last season?

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Watkins Glen International is along the lines of Darlington in its low likelihood to deliver a major surprise winner. Any road course has the potential for someone to play a strategy that works to perfection. But in order for that to result in leading meaningful laps, the driver has to have enough speed to be close enough to the front for it to work out.

Clements scored a shocking road course win back in 2017 at Road America, in part due to strategy, so don’t count him all the way out at Watkins Glen. Burton and Poole both finished in the top 12 last season at WGI, so look for their crew chiefs to dial up some contrarian strategies to give them a chance.

That leaves the final race of the regular season.

Bristol Motor Speedway. The Last Great Colosseum gets to host an exciting event on Sept. 20. The playoff field will be set in a perfect venue. But can Bristol deliver an upset win? Absolutely! At first glance it may not appear to be so, but let’s throw history out the window for a moment and use some common sense here. The race is going to be insane. It’s Bristol, for goodness’ sake — a high-contact short track where playoff points and playoff berths will be on the line.

That means we’re probably going to see a lot of yellow flags. Retzlaff has shown some glimpses of enough speed to compete for the win straight-up, proven by his pole earlier this year at Richmond Raceway. But a race filled with calamity and attrition could open the door for any of these drivers from Jones on down to Perkins to steal one and turn the playoff picture upside down.

For some of these drivers and teams, a playoff berth could change the trajectory of the entire organization. The added financial winnings and exposure that would come with it would mean everything to Weatherman or Ellis … or organizations such as Alpha Prime Racing, Our Motorsports, DGM Racing or Young’s Motorsports. It could catapult them to new levels in 2025 and beyond.

While Creed, Smith, Sieg and Kligerman will be praying for the status quo, this group of eleven underdogs has six more races to make their dreams come true and jumble up the entire playoff picture.

About the author

Steve Leffew joined Frontstretch in 2023 and covers the Xfinity Series. He has served honorably in the United States Air Force and and lives in Wisconsin.

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