The Xfinity Series Shows the Way Forward for NASCAR

What we saw on Saturday (Nov. 9) night at Phoenix Raceway was one of the greatest recent examples of what makes NASCAR racing so addicting.

Justin Allgaier’s championship win was about as entertaining as you’ll see. It proved the modern playoff format can work to perfection. It put a cherry on top of a spectacular season. As we look back on the 2024 season and ahead to 2025 and beyond, we start to see something unexpected. The Xfinity Series’ racing today is as good as any NASCAR racing has ever been. It strikes a balance, in a lot of ways, and raises a question:

Does Xfinity need to move in the direction of Cup, or does Cup need to move in the direction of Xfinity?

It wasn’t that long ago that the two were a lot more similar than they are today. While the playoff format is highly controversial right now, it worked well this year in Xfinity, so we’ll leave that debate to other columns. Let’s focus on everything else that goes into making a NASCAR season successful, entertaining, memorable and yes, even addicting.

Addiction is a strong word. I don’t use it lightly. If you’re reading Frontstretch, it’s safe to say you have something resembling addiction when it comes to NASCAR. Usually when you’re addicted to something, you know quitting would be good for you. With the way NASCAR has evolved and progressed, I see an unexpected path forward for so many fans, a path where Xfinity is the main attraction of the weekend — the one true must-see TV item on the overall weekly schedule. The other two series? Take them or leave them.

We all have to balance our personal lives, our families, our careers and our responsibilities very carefully with our NASCAR addition. If you disagree, imagine being a married 35-year-old with a wife, a kid and a demanding career. Then picture yourself parking on the couch for practice, qualifying and the main events of all three series. It isn’t necessarily harmful to your health, but it comes at a price to everything else in your life. It’s a huge commitment to keep up with everything, and priorities need to be set in households all around these United States of America.

The simplest solution has always been to ixnay the Craftsman Truck Series and the Xfinity Series and focus on Cup only. Cup has always had the highest ratings. It has the highest purse, the most appeal in pop culture and the most star power.

But of course, it does! It’s the major league. Major League Baseball attracts a humongous amount more attention than the minor-league divisions. Several iterations of lower-prestige professional football leagues have come and gone over the years, and none have ever come anywhere close to the dominance of the NFL. Almost nobody cares about the NBA G League.

Unintentionally, we seem to be moving into uncharted waters in NASCAR: waters where some of the most passionate fans of the sport are routinely finding the Xfinity Series a more satisfying use of oh-so-precious time than its Cup counterpart.

Take the two championship races, as an example. In Cup, we got another even-year Joey Logano championship. Logano’s overall likability seems to have increased with time, but his winning of the championship still felt a bit empty given his body of work over the season.

And the race itself? Not really that exciting. A few laps after each restart, the field got into familiar territory where air blocking was the name of the game and passing was extremely difficult. Ryan Blaney appeared to be a bit faster, but the wake of Logano made a pass for the lead out of reach. He couldn’t even get close enough to try something, even if he had the faster car.

A familiar sight, over and over again.@DaleJr | @NASCAR_Xfinity pic.twitter.com/clyeaSfoHe

— NASCAR Classics (@NASCARClassics) November 12, 2024

In the Xfinity title race, Allgaier emerged victorious after starting in the rear of the field, driving a backup car. At one point, he was penalized for changing lanes too early on a restart, and then sped on pit road while serving his penalty. The result? He went nearly two laps down during the final stage.

He was able to get back on the lead lap thanks to a perfectly-timed caution on lap 155 of 200 for Anthony Alfredo’s hard impact with the wall. I can guarantee you that if the Xfinity cars were more like the Cup cars, there was no way Allgaier would’ve been able to come up through the field like he did. The Xfinity cars allowed him to knife his way through, with very little aerodynamic limitation.

The best car and driver should win. In Xfinity, that common-sense idea is actually common. On the Cup side, the air blocking and aero dynamics mean if you get buried in the field, your prospects of getting back to the front can be dim to impossible, depending on the track.

Allgaier’s win was a feel-good story, too. He was congratulated by numerous competitors after the race, and every post-race driver interview on television came with comments about how the drivers were happy to see Allgaier win it.

2024 was Allgaier’s 14th full-time season in NASCAR’s second series and his seventh trip to the Championship 4. The seventh time was a charm for the driver of car no. 7.

On top of Allgaier’s popularity, his car owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. is pretty popular himself. And the car Allgaier drove to a championship? The backup car? It was the same car Earnhardt Jr. drove at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier this year.

That backup car @J_Allgaier won the #XfinitySeries championship last night with?

It was @DaleJr's Bristol car from possibly his final NASCAR race. pic.twitter.com/Ak29IexRKC

— Xfinity Racing (@XfinityRacing) November 10, 2024

This storybook ending was the perfect exclamation point on what has been a truly incredible season of stock car racing in the Xfinity Series. Seventeen drivers won races. Four of those winners were full-time Cup drivers, but 13 were not.

Austin Hill opened the season by living up to his reputation of being the man to beat at drafting tracks, with back-to-back wins at Daytona International Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway. John Hunter Nemechek proved he hasn’t forgotten how to drive a race car despite his struggles in Cup, claiming two wins in Xfinity.

Texas Motor Speedway gets a bad reputation, but in April we saw a thriller there, as Sam Mayer denied Ryan Sieg his first career win in a photo finish. Margin of victory? 0.002 seconds.

THAT CLOSE!

Sam Mayer beats Ryan Sieg to the line to WIN at Texas Motor Speedway! #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/lsZiSUAILr

— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) April 13, 2024

We saw Shane van Gisbergen hone his craft of racing on ovals while also picking up three road course wins. Speaking of road courses, we saw Connor Zilisch win in absolutely dominant fashion in his series debut at Watkins Glen International. With SVG heading to the Cup Series in 2025, Zilisch is poised to take over the mantle of being the best road course racer in the series, as he will run full-time for JR Motorsports next season.

We saw an instant classic at Indianapolis, where reduced horsepower actually succeeded in creating unbelievably good racing. Riley Herbst scored his second career win with a daring last-lap pass of Aric Almirola while also holding off his charging defending champion teammate, Cole Custer.

REPOST TO CONGRATULATE RILEY HERBST!

HE PASSES ARIC ALMIROLA TO WIN THE #XfinitySeries RACE ON THE INDIANAPOLIS OVAL. pic.twitter.com/QSMxdZY1E8

— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 20, 2024

Almirola ran part-time for Joe Gibbs Racing and strengthened his legacy, with three wins and eight top-fives in 14 races. Another part-time JGR driver, Ryan Truex, also won two races and put any doubts of his talent to rest, making him a candidate for a full-time ride in 2025.

Fan favorite Matt DiBenedetto re-joined the series, replacing some of the star power that left when Hailee Deegan parted ways with AM Racing and exited the series entirely in the middle of the year. Rookie of the Year Jesse Love scored his first career win at Talladega while doing a masterful job saving fuel far longer than anyone thought he could.

While there were plenty of highs, there were some lows. I took a lot of heat after writing “Is Sheldon Creed a Choke Artist?” after his second-place finish at Daytona. Creed then went on the break Dale Jarrett’s record for second-place finishes without a win. In 2024 alone, he had six of them.

A longtime fixture of the series, Johnny Davis Motorsports, ceased operations amid a bankruptcy filing. MBM Motorsports scaled back their operation to part-time and only made three starts. Sieg came oh-so-close but was not able to break through for a win, and he remains winless through 367 starts.

With the Cup Series having gone to the new car, it has been assumed that it would only be a matter of time before Xfinity moved in a similar direction. What we’ve seen this season should make it clear that not only should that not happen — but if any series needs to learn from the other, it’s the other way around.

Do I think that will happen? No. I find it hard to believe that NASCAR would go back on any of those major changes for its premier series. The reluctance to do so will only continue to enhance the appeal of the Xfinity Series in comparison. With more appeal comes more viewers, and more money coming into the series, I’m not naïve enough to think that Xfinity could supersede Cup. However, I can envision a future where Xfinity is a close 1b to Cup’s 1a.

There are countless reasons why. With the CW Network exclusively airing all the races on free-to-air TV, and their free streaming app beginning next season, the Xfinity Series will actually be available to more people than many of the Cup races on cable or streaming-only networks.

1.113M viewers for the #XfinitySeries Championship on @TheCW_Sports, the first time the series has cracked 1M viewers on the channel.

That’s ⬆️ 17% vs. the 2023 championship on USA. pic.twitter.com/ibFMGanPVC

— Bryan Mapes (@IAmMapes) November 12, 2024

“Names are made here” is the slogan of the series, and it has been for some time. It’s fitting. But Allgaier’s championship showed it’s not only a pipeline series: it can be the destination, too. Drivers like Kyle Busch have commented on how the Xfinity cars are more fun to drive. Almirola has found a new happy place in the series.

It’s a place that still serves as a pipeline, but one that also gives drivers second chances. Allgaier struggled in his Cup career, but he never drove for anything near a top-tier team back then. There were probably at least 10 future Cup drivers competing in Xfinity this season, and Allgaier beat them all. That dynamic makes for great entertainment.

Xfinity also enjoys some benefits of racing on Saturdays. How many die-hard NASCAR fans still prioritize the NFL when that league’s season gets going? Sure, college football is huge too, but NFL is king. The Xfinity Series viewer doesn’t have to make a choice. They get to have their cake and eat it too.

The races are shorter, too. Americans are busier than ever. People work long hours and sometimes multiple jobs. That leaves a lot of chores and errands to be done on the weekends. The Xfinity Series can be enjoyed in just three hours, often less. This allows viewers to give it their full attention and still get the lawn mowed.

This season was spectacular. The championship race was as good as it gets. The Cup finale’s lackluster result will leave people thinking about which series is a better use of their precious time throughout the offseason.