LINCOLN, Ala. — Cigar smoke wafted through the air next to the Alpha Prime Racing haulers as the team celebrated a successful day at Talladega Saturday (Oct. 18) afternoon.
“We’re going through the cigar budget pretty well this year,” joked team owner Tommy Joe Martins. “We’re actually getting pretty good at this.”
Talladega was the third time in the last six weeks the Alpha Prime team broke out the cigars, celebrating top-10 finishes at Bristol and WWT Raceway. But today, the team also had a top-five finish to celebrate courtesy one of the team’s co-owners: Caesar Bacarella.
💨 A DOUBLE CIGAR FOR @AlphaBacarella AND @Parker79p AT @TALLADEGA!
— Alpha Prime Racing (@TeamAlphaPrime) October 18, 2025
P5 – P7#UnitedRentals250 | #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/kPh9tvtoWR
“For us, this is huge. This is a win,” Bacarella said, who had just climbed from his car after a career-best fifth-place finish. The 49-year-old earned it in just his 36th career start in the series, a career part-timer who typically only runs the drafting tracks on the schedule.
The run was made even more impressive considering Bacarella didn’t feel well inside the car. The team actually had Stefan Parsons on standby although they never wound up using him.
“I had a sinus infection,” Bacarella said. “I had this major migraine headache and I was struggling, you know, with the headache. I was able to pull through it.”
Before the overtime restart, Bacarella was also one of the drivers that decided to come down pit road and top off for fuel. The No. 5 wound up driving back through the field, leaving him proud he kept it clean.
“Going from the back to the front, pretty much think we earned it,” Bacarella said. “The team this year, we had our top 10s, we had our top five, so I think we’re showing we got something special. I think we’re like the little engine that could.”
Martins shared some pride for the Alpha Prime organization overall, which had all four cars running at the finish, ending inside the top 20. Parker Retzlaff finished seventh, Josh Williams wound up 14th, and Brennan Poole crossed the line in 19th.
“Our [No.] 44 car is still racing for a top 20 in points. That’s a really big deal for us,” Martins said. “The [No.] 4 team, I’ll tell you, that 4 team, I’m really proud of them.”
“They just had a middle stretch of the season where it just felt like nothing went their way and gosh, they have really started putting some races [together] here in the last third of the year and been really fast.”
Just outside of the top five, a few other drivers had their own career days. Behind Bacarella, Blaine Perkins earned his career-best performance in sixth driving for Jordan Anderson’s team.
“It’s always good, I guess, to be a little disappointed when it’s our career best finish,” Perkins said. He carried that letdown in his tone because of a missed opportunity to wind up higher.
“I think if I could have somehow blocked [Carson Kvapil] going down the back[stretch],” he said, thinking of a top-three result… or better. “But they had such a big run, I kind of split them up.”
Two @TALLADEGA races in 2025, two top 10's.@BlainePerkins21 brings home a career-best #XfinitySeries finish in 6th. pic.twitter.com/0XGmk2XFDI
— Xfinity Racing (@XfinityRacing) October 18, 2025
Outside of the top 10, Nick Leitz crossed the stripe in 11th. It’s his first career top-15 result in NXS.
“It was something I didn’t really expect,” Leitz said. “I’ve always liked plate racing. It’s a blast. For real, I didn’t think we were a P11 car until the very end there when it all went wild.”
P11‼️
— Nick Leitz 𝕏 (@NickLeitz_) October 18, 2025
I REPEAT,
P11‼️‼️‼️
Leitz had a smile when talking about his new personal best, but he also took note of Bacarella inside the top five.
“When I saw him finish like fifth or something, I was like, ‘dang, I should have been there,’” Leitz said. “Nonetheless, we still had a good finish out of it.”
Also among the underdogs at the front was Leland Honeyman, who wound up eighth. It’s not his best career finish but it matches his best effort of the season at Atlanta this spring. But, like Perkins, the part-time driver felt more frustration than excitement, a Cinderella story that ultimately fell short of the big trophy.
“You always get shuffled out, no matter who you are, no matter if you’re a B-tier team,” Honeyman said about the finish. “You always get chucked out and I’m just tired of it, man.”
Man O Man pic.twitter.com/mvzKmIVua0
— Leland Honeyman Jr (@Lelandhoneymnjr) October 19, 2025
At the final choose, Honeyman had an opportunity to take a front row spot. However, he decided to restart behind eventual race-winner Austin Hill.
“I felt like after we had the damage, we just couldn’t do anything,” Honeyman said, adding, “It didn’t feel like I had the get-up-and-go with the damage.”
Caleb began sports writing in 2023 with The Liberty Champion, where he officially covered his first NASCAR race at Richmond in the spring. While there, Caleb met some of the guys from Frontstretch, and he joined the video editing team after graduating from Liberty University with degrees in Strategic Communications and Sports Journalism. Caleb currently work full-time as a Multi-Media Journalist with LEX 18 News in Lexington, Kentucky and contributes to Frontstretch with writing and video editing. He's also behind-the-scenes or on camera for the Happy Hour Podcast, live every Tuesday night at 7:30!