The ‘Mayo Missile’, as it was dubbed by JR Motorsports, lived up to its name.
Justin Allgaier sweated out fuel mileage, a short red flag for rain and an overtime finish to win the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ Cabo Wabo 250 on Aug. 17 (Saturday) at Michigan International Speedway.
Allgaier’s road to his 25th-career win and second in 2024 was a complicated one. When teammate Carson Kvapil pitted for fuel with 17 laps to go, the Illinoisan inherited the lead and looked to be in a race against John Hunter Nemechek, Sheldon Creed and the rain.
A crash for Kyle Weatherman and subsequent rain shower threatened to end the race prematurely. But the track didn’t get too damp and NASCAR was able to send the field back for overtime after a brief stoppage. On the ensuing restart Allgaier gained a huge lead over Creed, who was charging for one last challenge before a crash that saw Kyle Sieg flip on the backstretch brought out a race-ending caution on the final lap.
Nemechek finished third, Anthony Alfredo took fourth and Sammy Smith rounded-out the top-five.
The Winners
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Sheldon Creed finished runner-up.
The polesitter recovered from a spin in stage one for a record-setting 11th second-place finish without a win in the Xfinity Series.
While it’s not a win, Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) clearly had one of the best team performances of the day. On top of Nemechek in third, Taylor Gray managed an eighth-place run despite a spin on lap 15. The lone JGR finisher outside the top-10 was Chandler Smith, who finished 27th after his involvement in the race-ending accident.
Sammy Smith drove through the field after a tire problem during stage one and collected his first top-five since Iowa. It came at a critical time. Smith had exited June’s Hy-Vee Perks 250 with a 31-point lead over the cutline, but that advantage over Ryan Sieg vanished over the ensuing month.
Sieg had his own issues to overcome. After being the surprise winner of stage one, his nose was damaged during a run-in with Riley Herbst, forcing him to give up track position and fight all day to pick it back up. After the dust settled, Sieg managed a 13th-place finish and kept the cutoff line within reach.
Noah Gragson and Rette Jones Racing’s No. 30 Ford continue to deliver solid results. The team has three top-10s in as many runs after a sixth-place effort at Michigan.
Matt DiBenedetto finished seventh to match Viking Motorsports’ best finish in its first season of competition.
Caesar Bacarella, the 50-year old running just his second Xfinity race of the season, brought home a ninth-place finish. It’s Bacarelli’s third career top-10 and first to come at a track other than Talladega. All three have come in his past four starts.
The Losers
Early on, it looked like the only cars that could hang with JGR were Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Riley Herbst and Cole Custer. That all changed in a matter of seconds on lap 50.
Herbst looked to make a move past Ryan Sieg down the backstretch and was given clearance by his spotter. The only problem? He wasn’t actually clear.
The No. 98 got hooked hard into the turn 3 wall, sending cars all over the track. In the mayhem, Custer ran into the back of Brandon Jones and effectively ended his day.
Herbst finished 38th while Custer came home 30th, throwing away any momentum the organization had from back-to-back wins at Pocono and Indianapolis before the Olympic break.
Future Haas Factory Team driver Sam Mayer was another driver collected in the mayhem, finishing 37th. The bad luck that bit Mayer at the beginning of the season seems to be rearing its ugly head again, with the Wisconsinite suffering back-to-back DNFs for the second time this season. A pair of 10th-place finishes are his best results in the six races since his win at Iowa.
In what turned out to be a draft-heavy race, you’d expect Richard Childress Racing to be a factor at the finish, but you’d be wrong. Austin Hill finished 18th after pitting before the green-white-checkered and he got off lucky. Jesse Love fell a lap down after a late green-flag pit stop for tires and finished 29th.
A debuting Lawless Alan was on track for the best performance of his NASCAR career – until he wasn’t.
After a fifth-place finish in stage one and just missing out on points in stage two, Alan got loose and crashed on lap 67 to end his day. His 35th-place finish marks a third-straight finish outside the top-25 for AM Racing since Joey Logano piloted the car to a top 10 in Chicago.
Kyle Sieg made the highlight reel for all the wrong reasons on the last lap, going airborne and landing on his roof on the backstretch before flipping through turn 3’s infield grass. To add insult to injury, Sieg restarted 10th and — after collecting points in stage one — was on track for his best finish of 2024.
The Playoff Pit
Five races remain in the Xfinity Series regular season and only four playoff spots remain. AJ Allmendinger, Sheldon Creed and Parker Kligerman currently hold the first three places above the cutline.
After entering the day three points below the cutline, Sammy Smith is back in the playoffs by just one point over Ryan Sieg. Jones crashed out for a 36th-place finish, putting him 93 points behind Sieg and likely in need of a win.
Allgaier joins Hill, Mayer and Chandler Smith as two-time winners in the Xfinity Series this season. The driver of the No. 7 has cut Custer’s lead in the series standings down to just 12 points.
Paint Scheme of the Race
It was a great race for fans of blue and purple paint schemes. Daniel Dye, Shane van Gisbergen and Creed all ran those colors in a variety of shades, but Kvapil’s No. 88 stood out from the pack – literally, it led the field for 25 laps in the final stage.
Kvapil’s car didn’t come home looking as pretty as its blue-and-white wrap. The young prospect was turned into the outside wall on the final lap and finished 26th.
Fuel For Thought
As someone who used to make yearly trips north to Michigan International Speedway, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a race that looked quite like Saturday’s race did.
The series ran superspeedway restricted engines with its intermediate aero package, which saw drivers more reliant on the draft and supplied more pack racing than you’d expect from the 2-mile speedway. NBC’s Steve Letarte compared the final stage to a late 90’s summer Daytona race where everyone’s racing in a line but at different paces to try and make it on fuel.
The fans ultimately got an exciting finish, but the racing up until then wasn’t much to write home about. Most of the pack ran single-file without anyone to gain a real advantage. Kvapil at one point led by about 2.5 seconds, but only because he was the only one of the lead pack not looking to save fuel for a complete race.
It was a superspeedway race without the superspeedway pace as the cars typically topped out at around 175 mph. What it did have was the dangerous and difficult to watch wrecks, including Kyle Sieg’s flip and a hard crash by Weatherman that left him visibly shaken up.
A disappointing follow up to Indianapolis, maybe one of the best races this year in all of NASCAR. Not to mention a frustrating race from the series many feel provides the best NASCAR racing on any given weekend.
Where to Next?
The Xfinity Series heads back to where the season started with the Wawa 250 at Daytona International Speedway on Aug. 23. Allgaier won last season’s summer trip to the 2.5-mile superspeedway, beating Creed by just 0.005 seconds.
TV coverage of the Wawa 250 begins at 7:30 p.m. ET on Friday with USA Network broadcasting the event.
James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a local sports reporter, including local short track racing. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.