Eyes on Xfinity: William Sawalich’s Ride on the Struggle Bus

There’s no doubt that Katherine Legge has a lot to learn about stock car racing, but so does William Sawalich.  

Through her first few races of a broad tour of NASCAR’s top divisions this season, she’s getting a crash course — unfortunately for her, literally — on the do’s-and-don’ts of racing amongst the sport’s best.

Another lesson came at Rockingham Speedway on April 19 when Legge was involved in a crash with the lead-lap car of Sawalich. But even Legge, the 44-year-old with just eight stock car starts to her name, has quickly caught onto one of the time honored traditions of the sport.

You don’t wreck. You get “taken out.”

“There was not much I could do there,” Legge said. “I was taken out by Sawalich. I had given the lane to whoever just passed me, and he just moved up the racetrack and understeered right into my left rear. Not much you can do.”

There’s a lot of angles you can take on Legge’s race at Rockingham, depending on where you sit on the debate of letting Legge race in the top divisions of NASCAR. But there’s something that’s been lost in the debate surrounding arguably the most successful female driver to ever helicopter into the sport.

She was right, and the incident between Legge and the 18-year-old Sawalich was just as much a lesson for the NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie as it was for her.

As Legge said, Nick Sanchez is able to pass underneath cleanly. Legge actually starts to check up and ease up the track and widen the lane for Sawalich and Kasey Kahne. Sawalich doesn’t change his line, doesn’t change his speed and blows into Legge’s left rear to ruin everyone’s day. 

It would be frustrating in isolation, but it’s not. The week prior at Bristol Motor Speedway saw an even more puzzling move that upended Sawalich’s best run this season. Mason Massey spun with just under 100 laps to go, and everyone started to check up to avoid him. Sawalich hit the brakes too late and ran into the back of Connor Zilisch, ending his day while he was in the top 10.

Again, disappointing in a vacuum, but then there are Sawalich’s comments afterward.

“We were just running normal laps, and everyone checked up off (turn) 4,” Sawalich said. “I just never got the call to slow down. Sucks, but it is what it is. This place is at a really fast pace, and things happen really fast.”

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that, yes, Bristol is extremely hard to run. However, being the one guy who fails to check up in a wreck and then putting the onus on not being told by his spotter to check up? A bad look to go with an already bad first half of the season.

Sawalich actually had a solid start to the season with back-to-back ninth-place finishes at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Circuit of the Americas followed by a 13th-place run at Phoenix Raceway. Since then? No finishes better than 24th. 

Sawalich is 25th in the point standings in a Joe Gibbs Racing ride, forced to play catch up to underfunded mid-pack drivers and rides like Jeremy Clements, Anthony Alfredo and Matt DiBenedetto.

Even taking an experienced pack of drivers out of it, Sawalich is last among the eight Rookie of the Year contenders by a mile. The gap to the next rookie driver in the standings — Sanchez in 17th — is 75 points.

It’s worth reminding people why Sawalich is in this seat, even as he struggles to find his footing. Sawalich dominated in two seasons racing full time in the ARCA Menards Series East and part time in the national ARCA Menards Series. He won nearly half of his entries in both divisions and won back-to-back East titles.

But there’s an asterisk worth mentioning. This came in Joe Gibbs Racing equipment. That’s not a knock on Sawalich — if anything it’s a compliment to his abilities to get a vote of confidence from the team as a high schooler — but his competition wasn’t nearly what it was going to be at whichever level he took next. 

Often, the only teams that could provide any resistance were from Pinnacle Racing Group, Rev Racing or fellow Toyota outlet Venturini Motorsports. For just about anyone else in the field on a given night, the goal was to simply get to the finish and try and be as close to the lead lap as you could. Some of Sawalich’s dominance in ARCA was a credit to his talent, but some of it also came down to the fact his team had a huge advantage when it came to resources.

Sawalich is a great young racer. But that’s the key qualifier: young. While his success in ARCA made him undeniable for a step up the ranks, Sawalich probably took a step too far in going straight to Xfinity in a championship-contending car. 

For Sawalich and his No. 18 team, there’s two ways this season goes from here. They could figure it out and maybe find their way into the playoff picture. Or the rookie continues to take his lumps and has to get better by learning lessons the hard way.