A decent NASCAR Xfinity Series race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL led into what looked like a fantastic finish until a fiasco right at its climax.
With 14 laps remaining, a caution came out that changed everything.
Thomas Annunziata hit the turn 1 wall after losing his brakes on the frontstretch, setting up a difficult situation for the leaders.
Most of the leaders elected to pit under the caution, with Shane van Gisbergen in second the only one not to.
On the ensuing restart, it became clear that taking tires was the right call, as the pitters ran through the field like an oatmeal bowl made with too much water.
Parker Kligerman, who spent much of the day hovering in the bottom half of the top 10, took the lead 10 laps to go. The retiring Kligerman then spent the next nine laps pulling out all of the stops to try and stay ahead of Sam Mayer.
The race to the finish felt like a microcosm of Kligerman’s career. The veteran Kligerman holding on and refusing to move over for the next generation in Mayer, who has opportunities that Kligerman never had in his career.
And then the caution came out, in a millisecond before Kligerman took the white flag – continuing the trend of the race being a metaphor for Kligerman’s career.
There will be more discussion on this situation down below, but regardless, on the ensuing restart, Mayer was able to get by Kligerman.
Kligerman struggled with a tire rub and fell to sixth on the finish. Mayer won and was able to clinch a spot in the next round of the playoffs. AJ Allmendinger finished second and advanced, while his teammate van Gisbergen finished third and came two points short of doing so.
The Winners
Mayer’s win was a bit flawed, but it definitely was not a fluke. Mayer was fast all day in spite of having to serve a penalty at the very start due to jumping the start of the race.
Mayer was able to drive back up through the field and may have even gotten by Kligerman regardless of that last caution had he not have a clutch issue that popped up late in the going.
Josh Bilicki‘s cameo appearance with Joe Gibbs Racing was a fair success. The Wisconsinite led 10 laps and definitely turned some heads. He ended up finishing in eighth, tied for the best finish of his career.
The Losers
It seems like just about everybody else lost with the finish we had, but one person who had a particularly rotten day was Sheldon Creed.
He got caught up in the above incident, then was the next caution when his engine blew up on the next restart.
In the last 15 races prior to Saturday, Creed had 11 top-five finishes, and came into the day having finished fifth and fourth in the last two races in the round. But it wasn’t enough, and he was eliminated from the playoffs.
Even when it comes to disappointing playoff exits, Creed has ended up finishing second, this time to Kligerman.
Riley Herbst was also part of that wreck. After meeting DVP, Herbst went to the garage to get his trackbar replaced. Herbst was able to come back out for a few laps before the driveshaft failed on him, finishing 32nd and out of the playoffs.
The Playoff Pit
Van Gisbergen, Creed, Herbst and Kligerman were all eliminated following the race.
Justin Allgaier made an excellent call by staying out and winning stage two. Those 10 stage points helped him to just barely squeeze him over the cutoff line.
Because he did make it, everything has reverted back to where it was for the No. 7 team. They have a cushion once again on the rest of the field, one they are going to be looking not to have to rely on once again.
Paint Scheme of the Race
It has little skyscrapers on the side! I don’t know why we associate lawyers so much with cities, because there’s plenty of law practiced in smaller towns, but I’m not complaining.
Sage Karam was running top 10 for a fair amount of the day before losing his brakes in the closing laps of the race and not finishing.
Fuel for Thought
This finish was such a total, complete failure on the part of NASCAR.
Okay, so NASCAR, which has been officiating races for the last 76 years, decided not to throw the caution when a car wrecked and got stuck in the tire barrier, for thirty seconds. And the officials’ excuse is that they could not see something on a track with a million cameras, and did not even have a marshal down there to judge a situation like this.
There are people – wrong people – who do not support 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports’ anti-trust lawsuit with NASCAR.
The reality of the situation is that horrible calls like this happen all the time because NASCAR has no accountability. None. Yes, I’m here writing about it, but that’s not going to affect anything they do.
NASCAR officiating has always been a bit spotty, but my goodness, this year has had a new controversy every weekend. How many times does Elton Sawyer have to address the press (or, in his weekly segment on Sirius XM, the NASCAR employees asking him questions) until something actually changes?
And today, somebody could have been seriously injured. Leland Honeyman was thankfully uninjured, but what if he was and NASCAR spent half a minute doing nothing? The same NASCAR that will also almost routinely call cautions on ovals when a car is in a drift before the driver corrects themselves?
We had the best finish of the year, in the best series this year, completely and totally ruined by NASCAR itself. This was a situation where a number of people, myself included, saw that and decided they weren’t going to tune in next week. Hell, I’ve got a Formula 1 race weekend to worry about anyway, and so will a hundred thousand other people who will go to that race instead of watching NASCAR.
It’s a mess that I seriously hope this lawsuit changes, or at least addresses. If NASCAR is going to continue to officiate its own races, it needs to stop putting its fingers in its ears and actually address the serious issues that race control now has.
Where to Next?
Now that the first round of the playoffs has concluded, it’s time for the season to really get heated up.
Next up on the calendar is Las Vegas, home of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. A rare Saturday night race for east coasters, it all starts on Saturday, October 19th at 7 p.m. ET, with TV coverage on The CW.
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.