Aric Almirola is not part of the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs but his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry is and now that entry has automatically advanced into the second round.
Almriola won the playoff opener on Saturday at Kansas Speedway in dramatic fashion to close out a dramatic race full of two playoffs worth of drama.
First, Almirola is running the full seven-race playoffs and since he won at Martinsville Speedway earlier in the season, the No. 20 car is in the owners playoffs, which is actually where all the money is paid out at the end of the season anyway.
So, this is actually a big deal for this team.
“That was a blue-collar day. Man, that was a really tough day. We had such a great car. This He Gets Us Toyota GR Supra was so fast. Just we kept putting ourselves behind and I felt like we just kept having bad luck. (Pit) gun breaking, things going wrong, but the car was fast. When you have a fast car, you can overcome a lot so just really proud of everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing. What a way to start the Playoffs to lock ourselves in the next round of the owner’s championship.”
Playoff theatrics
There was a great deal of playoff dramatics.
First, top-seeded Justin Allgaier continued a miserable stretch of races in which he lost the regular season championship and now suddenly finds himself at risk of first round elimination.
The veteran was involved in a three-wide battle with Sheldon Creed and Connor Zilisch on a restart, where he was bounced around, and sent into the Turn 2 inside retaining wall.
“I thought we were going to be in a great spot, we were gaining momentum off of [turn] 2 and Sheldon just, I don’t know what happened, but the momentum from him just stopped and we lifted a couple of times and kept trying to let him gather it up and get it figured out,” Allgaier said.
“And the guys behind me, with the run they had behind, I don’t know that there was any contact from behind. I think that I did make some contact with the No. 18 eventually, but the inside row was coming up and I just ran out of real estate.”
Allgaier went from 27 points above the cutline to one below it.
“What a couple of weeks it’s been,” Allgaier said. “It’s been awful.”
The biggest playoff adjacent drama involved Cole Custer and Chandler Smith, as the latter put the former in the wall while trying to defend the lead with 10 laps to go. That’s the contact that allowed Almirola to take the lead en route to the win.
There was a confrontation afterwards.
“I am just sick of getting cleared and him just driving me into the fence,” Custer said afterwards. “He didn’t have me clear and just drove me into the fence. It is just a joke. I told him that if he is going to race me like a clown, I am going to race him like a clown. It is a joke that people race like that. He was going for the win, but he is going to have it coming back to him now.”
Smith said this was just a byproduct of the stakes when a win automatically sends you to the next round.
“We’re playoff racing and if I won this race, it advances us to the next round,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of stakes to that obviously and not to mention he’s also the guy that we’re racing for the championship. We’re going to race hard, it’s not the regular season anymore. I’m not just going to let him go at the very end of the race like I would in the regular season if he’s that much better.
“I respect the hell out of Cole (Custer). He’s gave me a lot of breaks and in his eyes, he gave me a few today, which I’ll go back and watch and if I’m in the wrong I’ll apologize. I felt like it was the end of the race, he knew he was better, and I had to do what I had to do to hold him up as long as I can to try to give me a shot to win the thing.”
Custer says it will come back around.
“He’ll have to pay the consequences.”
