Roval Xfinity cutoff race brings the drama and intrigue

You know the old adage — better to be lucky than good.

Sammy Smith, as engineered by crew chief Phillip Bell, was exactly that on Saturday evening at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. They were six points below the cutline, with both a fading right front tire, and little room to go forward inside of five laps to go.

So Bell called Smith down pit road in the hopes that a caution would give them a fighting chance. And as luck would have it, the caution waved for a Sage Karam incident as soon as the No. 8 reached its pit stall.

Just like that, Smith had a net zero track position and fresh tires, and drove his car to third place and a one point advantage over Taylor Gray to reach the Round of 8.

So was that luck or strategy?

“A little bit of both,” Bell said with a laugh. “It didn’t play out exactly like we wanted it to but we had planned on splitting the stage in two if we were in a must-win situation. I didn’t feel like at the time we were in a must-win situation but then it got down to three laps to go. We had a tire coming apart and it was the only play we had.”

Bell always knew that if it looked like there was no other play, come down pit road, because the math shows to expect a caution inside of the final five laps.

But even then, Bell didn’t expect it to actually play out that way, because who really does?

“The feeling, it was very good,” Bell said. “Sammy said earlier in the week, that if there is a will, there is a way, and I know everyone has heard that before, but that’s what we played off of.”

This was a race all about the clichés and idioms but it’s only a silly notion when it doesn’t work and it did work this time.

What’s one more idiom?

“It feels really good,” said Smith. “Obviously, it was a long shot coming into the day. We got lucky with that Hail Mary move Phil pulled and amazing call by him to do that. And yeah, just relieved because I felt like we are a Championship 4 caliber team and unfortunately what happened at Bristol took us out of it.

“So yeah, we’re just going to regroup and just try to do everything we can to go make the final four.”

This was just a whirlwind of possible results.

“It was from 10 to go thinking, ah, we’re not really going to make it in because we didn’t really have the speed to drive up and it didn’t look like he was going to lose enough positions.

“And yeah, Phil made a great call to pit and then obviously I had to make a lot of aggressive moves there and luckily, we were able to make it in. So yeah, just relieved and ready to move on to the next round. Just thank the good man above and obviously I feel like we had an unfortunate situation at Bristol and that put us in the position we are. So yeah, just very thankful.”

On the other end was Gray, who had spent most of the race battling Austin Hill for the final spot, and seemed secure in a transfer once the Richard Childress Racing No. 21 dropped a cylinder. Then came that final caution and a dogfight for every position.

The result left him despondent.

Agonizingly close for Gray

Watch: Taylor Gray: ‘Just weren’t good enough’ to advance to Round of 8

“Just obviously bummed out,” said Gray. “We don’t get to go racing for a championship at the end of the year.

“Just weren’t good enough. We weren’t good enough today. We didn’t have a good Bristol, and we shouldn’t have to even be in this spot. We are though, and we are going to take our loss, and move on to the next four and try to win us a couple of races.”

Beyond that, Gray said he couldn’t process his feelings in real time, and just said ‘this is tough’ before making his way back into the garage.

But again, this was a real rollercoaster of emotions for everyone involved in the cutline. Hill was eliminated due to his mechanical failure and Harrison Burton lost three laps earlier in the race due to a fuel pickup issue.

Nick Sanchez battled a variety of issues and was also eliminated from contention.

But the most notable elimination came in the form of Hill, who was stripped of all his playoff points for intentionally crashing Aric Almirola earlier in the summer at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

That ultimately cost Hill 21 points and he was eliminated by 21 points. It’s not quite that simple as he likely would have earned five more playoff points for his final regular season championship result, but he admitted that he was responsible for that.

“I’m not pointing the finger at anyone,” Hill said. “If anyone is at fault, it’s me for losing the 21 bonus points in the regular season … It’s just been our year unfortunately, ever since midway through the summer, maybe June, we just haven’t been firing on all cylinders.

“There are things that have gone wrong and things I could do better as a driver. I’ve made a lot of mistakes throughout the middle portion of the season and later on, and I thought we were turning it around there at Kansas having a strong showing and we were showing it here today and, just came up short.”

He was eighth and closing on Gray for the final spot when he started to lose power.

“Spark plugs or something came out, and caused it to run on like seven cylinders, which sucks,” Hill said. “These RCR and ECR engines are class of the field every week and I wouldn’t want to have anything other than an ECR in our car.”

Harrison Burton, AM Racing Ford

Photo by: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

For his part, Burton just had a fuel pickup issue.

“We had an issue in practice and changed everything we could and felt like we were going to be okay,” Burton said. “It turns out we had a fuel pickup issue, so that’s a whole fuel cell change and that’s not something we could really do under green. It’s just a bummer. All of the evidence we had didn’t really point to that being the issue, but it was and took us out of the race before it started.

“Even when we were out there, I was trying to save fuel to make it last as long as it could, so I didn’t ever really know how good we were or weren’t. That’s the hardest part, but I’m proud of our team. I’m proud of the season we’ve had. It’s been a lot of fun to make the playoffs and go to Bristol, a huge highlight for us to run in a really competitive way to start our playoffs. We just didn’t end it the right way.”

Updated Grid

Connor Zilisch +57
Justin Allgaier +24
Brandon Jones +4
Sam Mayer +2
—
Jesse Love -2
Sammy Smith -7
Carson Kvapil -11
Sheldon Creed -13

Those who remain

So now there are eight drivers left to race for the championship with just four spots available over the next three races at Las Vegas, Talladega and Martinsville. And realistically, it’s seven drivers for three spots because it’s realistic to go ahead and pencil in Connor Zilisch who just claimed his 10th victory at the Roval.

His lead is so massive that he could take Las Vegas off and still enter Talladega above the cutline. It would take a massive implosion for Zilisch, crew chief Mardy Lindley and the JR Motorsports No. 88 team to not race for the championship.

So that leaves the other seven to sort it out amongst themselves.

Mayer was ‘pissed off’ that a disaster of a day that included a pit road penalty and a chicane cutting penalty made it a relatively close advancement, but it doesn’t matter because he is indeed in and above the cut.

“We had everything thrown at us and used pretty much our entire cushion to make the next round, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is the beauty of the playoffs,” Mayer said. “You can have a bad day and the two really good days picked us up.

“Now, we can’t have that chasing the championship four because your margin of error is so much smaller and there’s just four spots left and not seven.”

Mayer said Martinsville is ‘not a place you can control’ while Jesse Love says he feels really good about everywhere but Martinsville.

“Knock on wood, I’ve never crashed out of a superspeedway race,” Love said with a laugh. “I feel great about Vegas. I think I ran third the last two times and then the fall last year, once the sun when down, I thought we had a car capable of winning. We are a little bit off right now but I think we can put our heads down and maximize our cars.

“And Martinsville, I pray to god I am locked in and if I’m not, I’ll just be a bull in a china shop, I guess.”

Historically, everyone trying to make the final four at Martinsville is.

Sheldon Creed shared those sentiments.

“I love the look of Vegas,” Creed said. “I ran fifth last week at a mile-and-a-half, so if we can just be a little bit better next week. You never know what will happen at a superspeedway, and then at Martinsville anything can happen.”

Carson Kvapil, in a sense, could be racing for his career as he knows it too. His full-time funding runs out at the end of this year and all he has right now is enough to share a ride with Connor Zilisch with Rodney Childers as crew chief.

“We’re going to go as far as we can with this team, right,” Kvapil said. “The goal from the first race or the first month of us being together as a group was to go for the final four, right? And to get as far as we can go but the goal is to be in the final four because then anything can happen when you get there.”

And then there’s his teammate, who no matter what happens once they get to Phoenix, has already established himself as the driver of the year independent of what happens come the checkered flag of the championship race.

“I’ve told my entire group, no matter what happens the next four races, it isn’t going to define our season,” said Zilisch. “Does that mean I’m not going to try to win the championship? No, it’s such a tough spot. There are guys, I’m not even going to go down that road, but it’s just the way it is and you have to accept that and everybody’s got the same rules and everybody is in the same format.

“So regardless of how our season goes from here, I wouldn’t say that this season hasn’t been a success.”

We want your opinion!

– The Motorsport.com Team