Send not to know for whom the Bell tolls, it tolls for Creed.
A late caution, a round of pit stops, and a chaotic overtime run helped Christopher Bell win the NASCAR Xfinity Series Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200 on Saturday (Aug. 31) at Darlington Raceway.
Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Sheldon Creed passed Bell with nine laps to go, but a late caution sent the field down pit road before a green-white-checkered finish. Bell’s pit crew put the No. 20 Toyota on the front row alongside Cole Custer, leaving it up to those two to duke it out for the win.
Despite contact on the backstretch with two laps to go, Bell and Custer managed to avoid an accident. Bell captured his second Xfinity win in as many starts in 2024, Custer followed, while Creed settled for third, and Chase Elliott and Sammy Smith rounded out the top five.
The Winners
They say suffering builds character, and for Creed’s sake, I hope that’s true.
Once again, Creed had one of the best cars all day. And just as has happened time and time again, something keeps him from his first Xfinity win. On Saturday, his pit crew cost him two spots on the final stop before overtime.
Creed’s disappointment is understandable, but lost in the shuffle of how close he’s been to a win is how consistent he’s been. He has seven top-five finishes in the last 10 races and only two finishes worse than eighth. It’s been said plenty of times before, but it feels like Creed’s win will come sooner rather than later.
JGR, as a whole, was solid beyond Bell and Creed. Chandler Smith quietly finished eighth, and Joe Graf Jr. overcame early issues to finish 11th.
Sammy Smith needed three things today – a good run, a better points position heading to Atlanta Motor Speedway, and a reasonably sized ice bag. Two out of three ain’t bad. Smith finished fifth and ended above the cut line thanks to 10 stage points.
For the first time since Chicago, both Richard Childress Racing drivers finished in the top 10. Jesse Love took sixth, while Austin Hill finished ninth.
Shane van Gisbergen is starting to get his bearings on ovals just in time for the playoffs. SVG finished seventh for his fourth top-10 on an oval this season.
The Losers
Smith may have cracked the top five, but the rest of JR Motorsports struggled to keep their noses clean at the Lady in Black.
Justin Allgaier, usually a favorite to be at the front, came home 10th. Sam Mayer cut a tire from the lead in stage one and wound up 28th at the finish. Brandon Jones was spun by van Gisbergen to bring out the caution at the end of stage one, leading to him finishing 32nd.
If you think the late caution hurt Creed, imagine how AJ Allmendinger must have felt taking the hit he took into the Darlington wall. The salt in the wound was that Allmendinger was on pace for his first top-five finish since Portland International Raceway before the accident. Instead, he came to the checkered flag in 27th.
Riley Herbst’s luck since his win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been hit or miss. He followed up a bad crash at Michigan International Speedway with a top five at Daytona International Speedway. This week at Darlington, it was more bad news for the Stewart Haas Racing driver. A tough early hit put him several laps down and relegated him to 35th at the finish.
Remember when Joey Logano got AM Racing a top-10 finish at Chicago in their first race in the post-Hailie Deegan era of the team, and we all thought the team may be onto something? Well, it followed that with finishes of 27th, 38th, 35th, and 36th in the next four races. Having Logano back in the car this weekend couldn’t change fortune, finishing 38th after just 12 laps due to an engine issue.
The Playoff Pit
Four spots remain open, with two regular-season races to go for the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Creed and Allmendinger — 109 and 105 points above the cutline, respectively — seem to be all but locked into the field of 12. Parker Kligerman sits 44 points above the cutline.
Sammy Smith’s strong performance puts him 10 points above the cutline, bumping Ryan Sieg as the first car out of the playoffs entering Atlanta. Jones is 132 points behind Smith, leaving him and the rest of the field with their only real hope of making the postseason coming via a victory.
Paint Scheme of the Race
Just like there’s no rule that a dog can’t play basketball, there’s no rule that says you can’t run a throwback paint scheme on a non-throwback weekend at Darlington.
Alpha Prime Racing took the chance to run a pair of throwback schemes, including a fantastic callback to Bill Elliott’s ‘Mac Tonight’ McDonald’s paint job on Brennan Poole’s No. 44 Chevy for sponsor Macc Doors.
Poole may not be over the moon with a 20th-place finish, but it’s par for the course regarding Alpha Prime equipment.
Fuel for Thought
You’d expect Creed to be disappointed after his loss, but his interview with USA Network after his third-place finish gave insight as to why this is becoming so agonizing for him.
“I took a chance on myself and brought all the money we could (to JGR),” Creed said. “I’m literally not even making a dollar this year. It just hurts when they get away like that.”
Creed is still pretty young, only 26, for a guy with a Craftsman Truck Series championship and 170 national series starts. This comment, whatever its validity, gave fans an insight into what this means for him.
Since he entered Xfinity full-time in 2022, eight different drivers have picked up their first career win in the series. With each new one, the walls must feel like they’re closing in on Creed to break through finally.
Where to Next?
The Xfinity Series goes superspeedway racing once again on Sept. 7 with the Focused Health 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Hill picked up his third in the last four Atlanta races when the series visited Hampton, Ga. in February.
TV coverage of the Focused Health 250 begins at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 7 with USA Network carrying 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.