CONCORD, N.C. — The NASCAR Xfinity Series’ trip to the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL on Saturday (Oct. 4) decided who would advance to the next round of the playoffs.
By the end of the race, Taylor Gray and Sammy Smith — old foes from a certain incident for the win at Martinsville Speedway earlier this season — found themselves near the cut line.
Neither one of them started the evening anywhere close to it.
When Gray left Kansas Speedway, he was sitting fifth in the playoff standings, 16 points ahead of Nick Sanchez, who was the first driver below the cut line entering Charlotte. Smith, on the other hand, was dead last of the 12 playoff drivers following Kansas, 14 points behind Jesse Love, the final driver inside the playoff cut line entering Charlotte.
Smith qualified fourth as part of a JR Motorsports top-five sweep, while Gray had some work to do by qualifying 17th. Smith gained a combined 16 stage points throughout the afternoon to put him in position to point his way in instead of finding himself in a must-win.
On the other hand, Gray scored no points while those around him did, inching him further down the point standings toward the cut line.
As the laps wound down, both drivers began to slip, though Smith faded worse than Gray. While Gray kept losing positions, it didn’t look like he’d lose enough to fall below the cut line before the checkered flag flew.
“From 10 to go, we were thinking, ‘Ah, we’re not really gonna make it in,’” Smith said after the race. “We really didn’t have the speed to drive up, and it didn’t look like he was gonna lose enough positions.”
Then, in a last-ditch attempt to make something magic happen, Smith’s crew chief, Phillip Bell, called the No. 8 to pit road. Smith had already reported a tire issue, so Bell made the call to pull him to pit lane. Mere moments after Smith dove for pit road, Sage Karam blew a tire on the frontstretch to bring out the final caution of the race.
”It was something on our bingo card,” Smith said of the call. “You saw a lot of guys do it — the [No.] 9 [of Connor Mosack] did it. A couple other guys did it — pit and just hope for a caution. That was something we were fighting a little bit, was blistering left fronts in right fronts all day.
”We were able to pit and obviously got that lucky caution.”
More drivers opted to pit under the caution, including Gray, who trusted in his crew chief, Jason Ratcliff, whatever the call would have been.
”Jason made that call, and obviously any call that Jason makes, I’m gonna stand behind him 100%,” Gray said after the race. “And I’m still gonna stand behind that call 100%.”
The fortunate timing of the caution and subsequent pit stops allowed Smith to restart toward the front, with Gray mired in traffic. The caution came out on the white flag lap, ending any surge Gray might have had in the final two-thirds of the lap. While Smith finished third, Gray came home 13th.
It took a while for NASCAR to sort out the finishing order to ensure the correct drivers moved on. Eventually, it was made official: Smith had beaten out Gray to earn the final Round of 8 spot.
The margin? Just one point.
“It feels really good,” Smith said of making the next round. “It was a long shot coming into the day. We got lucky with that Hail Mary move Phil pulled. Amazing call by him to do that.”
While Smith felt relieved, Gray felt resigned. He joins Sanchez, Austin Hill and Harrison Burton as the four drivers who will no longer contend for the 2025 championship.
”Probably gonna go home and cry myself to sleep,” Gray said candidly. “It is what it is.
“It sucks. We weren’t good enough today. We just weren’t a playoff-caliber car, so we got knocked out.”
Smith sneaking through to the Round of 8 ensured that half of the Round of 8 would consist of JRM cars, as all four are still alive in the title hunt. With the Round of 12 now in the rearview mirror, Smith and the No. 8 team will now focus on making that push to make the Championship 4.
”I’ve felt like we are a Championship 4-caliber team … we’re just gonna regroup and just try to do everything we can to go make the final four,” Smith said.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter. He has also assisted with short track content and social media, among other duties he takes/has taken on for the site. In 2025, he became an official member of the National Motorsports Press Association. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight coordinator in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.