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The time has come and gone. After 26 races, the NASCAR Xfinity Series concludes its regular season at Bristol Motor Speedway and set their 12-driver playoffs. That’s right, for the next seven weeks, the stars of the Xfinity Series will battle it out for the championship. So, how did the regular season finale turn out? Chandler Smith started on the pole position, with Cole Custer starting in second. Anthony Alfredo shocked the grid by starting third, while Justin Allgaier looked to wrap up his second regular-season championship from the fourth spot. In addition, Dale Earnhardt Jr. returned to the Xfinity Series, looking to avenge his loss from last year’s race. As for the cutline, Sammy Smith had a 43-point cushion going into the night, but a surprise winner could erase that gap. Who won the regular-season championship? Who made the playoffs? Any surprises? Let’s find out what happened during the 2024 Food City 300.
Per Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports, this was a 300-lap race. The stage breakdown was as follows:
Teams had four sets of Goodyear tires and a fuel window of 160-175 laps. Four drivers moved to the rear.
It didn’t take long for the race’s first caution to appear. On just the third lap of the race, Cole Custer slammed the outside wall with a flat tire. Custer came into the race 43 points behind Allgaier for the regular-season championship. Already a long shot, he’d be further behind with an incident early on.
Allgaier took the lead from Chandler Smith early in the race and paced the field for the first half of Stage 1. While he was working through lapped traffic, the No. 32 of Austin Green came down as the No. 7 passed by, nearly ripping the whole back bumper off before colliding with Parker Retzlaff to bring out the caution.
When Allgaier came onto pit road, the team sawed the rear bumper off the car—due to the rear bumper not being mandatory at short tracks allowed the No. 7 team to do so, similar to when Kyle Busch raced with no rear bumper during the 2018 Bristol Night Race. It caused Allgaier to lose a lot of track position, forcing him to work his way through the field, and giving Custer a fighting chance at the regular-season crown.
With Allgaier out of the picture, Chandler Smith was in prime position to take command of the stage after starting from the pole. And that’s exactly what he did. Smith pulled away to an over two-second lead over second place Jesse Love. Smith was the only one who competed with Allgaier. With the No. 7 mired back in traffic, it left no one to contest with the No. 81 for the Stage 1 victory. Smith won his sixth stage of the season and while he wasn’t in contention for the regular-season championship, he could move up to second in the standings with a good result.
With less than 20 laps to go in Stage 2, Allgaier and Sheldon Creed were catching race leader Sam Mayer at a rapid pace. They caught the back bumper of the No. 1 and tried to get by him. During the scuffle, the No. 18 of Creed hit the back bumper of the No. 1, getting him loose going into turn one. This caused a stack-up that allowed Allgaier to get to the inside of Creed, but he didn’t notice and turned inside of the No. 7, sending him into the inside wall and bringing out the caution.
There was a lot of damage to the front of Allgaier’s Camaro. The team worked to fix the damage, but the driver of the No. 7 ran over equipment while exiting pit-road, making the night worse. It was a rough night for the No. 7 team. After having the fastest car, even without a rear bumper, his chances of the win were down the drain. All that was left was to salvage the regular-season championship.
With 10 laps to go in the stage, many drivers chose to stay out to get track position. One of those was Jeremy Clements, who last pitted on lap 90. The driver of the No. 51 got a significant jump on the restart and pulled away to a two-second lead while the field battled behind him. Needing a win to make the playoffs was a step in the right direction for Clements as he went on to win Stage 2 at Bristol.
Dale Jr. had a strange night in his Xfinity Series return. First, his radio wasn’t working during the first stage, meaning he couldn’t hear his spotter or crew chief. The team elected to give him a new radio and a new helmet to fix the issue, which it did. But then the problems persisted. Junior dropped his glasses in the race car, making it difficult to see as he worked to the front of the field. During one of the yellows, the team gave him a new pair of glasses to replace the old ones. You’d think that’d be the end of the problems. No, it wasn’t.
During the final stage, Junior’s radio volume increased. With no way to lower the volume, his spotter, TJ Majors, screamed in his helmet throughout the run. Junior asked Majors to lower his voice while talking to the driver of the No. 88. The night continued to get stranger as Junior’s radio got in the water bottle holder, with the water bottle missing! Spooky season doesn’t start until October, but it’s safe to say Dale Jr. got a head start with a wild night at Bristol.
Allgaier stayed in the race but was over three seconds off the pace compared to the field. He remained in the race to try and clinch the regular-season championship over Cole Custer. His hope would soon be challenged as he spun on the track to bring out the races’ next caution. The team didn’t finish repairing all the damage, and the car was hurting as he was losing laps at a rapid pace. The team continued to work on the car but fell five laps down when the green flag dropped again.
Despite a crazy two-and-a-half stages, the final 90+ laps went caution-free and relatively tame. The No. 00 of Custer led the field since the last caution and never relinquished the top spot. With Allgaier falling to 10 laps down, the path to the regular-season title was clear for the 2023 Xfinity Series champion. The JGR duo of Sheldon Creed and Chandler Smith tried to get close but couldn’t get closer than a second to the back bumper of the No. 00. As the checkered flag flew, Custer came across the start/finish line to win his second race of the season and clinch the 2024 regular-season championship by just three points over Justin Allgaier.
After 26 races, the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs are set! 12 drivers will battle it out for the championship for the next seven races. Cole Custer, Justin Allgaier, Shane van Gisbergen, Chandler Smith, Austin Hill, Jesse Love, Sam Mayer, Riley Herbst, AJ Allmendinger, Parker Kligerman, and Sammy Smith will fight for the 2024 Xfinity Series championship. Kligerman will race for a championship in his final season as a full-time driver, while Custer will look to go back-to-back before he returns to Cup in 2025. Here is the playoff seeding to begin the playoffs:
That’ll do it for the Food City 300. It was a wild race, to say the least. Lots of action, tempers flaring, and Dale Jr. possibly getting haunted with his in-car shenanigans. What a way to end the regular season for the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Be sure to tune back in right here at DailyDownforce.com tomorrow for our coverage of the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
