Cole Custer will end 2017 with his first career NASCAR XFINITY Series victory on Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Custer, who started in second, led the field for 182 circuits in his No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford with Haas Automation on the side.
The season marked the first year of racing full-time in the series as he ran a full-time Camping World Truck Series slate with JR Motorsports in 2016. Custer, a 19-year old from California, closed out 2017 with seven top five and 19 top 10 finishes and an average finish of 13.3.
“We were so close to making it last weekend and really wanted to end strong. We knew we were gonna be really good this weekend, but our Haas Automation Mustang was unreal,” said Custer after the win. “We really wanted to have a good showing at Ford Championship Weekend. Even though we weren’t in it we wanted to win. Hopefully, we can sweep it tomorrow.”
In addition to that, Custer became the only driver in 2017 to have a perfect driver rating of 150.0 at the end of a race. The No. 00 also swept all three stages enroute to victory lane in the Ford EcoBoost 300.
“I don’t know. I’ve had some good cars before, but that was pretty impressive,” added Custer when asked if he ever had a car this strong. “ I can’t say enough about this group, too. They’ve worked so hard all year getting it up and going and it’s just unbelievable. There’s no better team I’ve worked with before and I can’t thank them enough.”
William Byron will walk away with the 2017 NASCAR XFINITY Series driver championship. Byron entered his first full-time season in the series after racing full-time in the Camping World Truck Series with Kyle Busch Motorsports last year.
The championship did not come easy for Byron in the closing laps. The battle came down to he and Elliott Sadler for the spot when things went south for Sadler. While racing Ryan Preece, Sadler and Preece made contact, causing both cars to either hit the wall or nearly spin. The two drivers got out of the car and expressed their displeasures with NASCAR officials keeping them away following the race.
“I don’t know that I took a breath the last 20 laps,” said Byron when asked about the battle with Sadler at the end. “That was incredible. I just have to thank this team. This is awesome. Elliott (Sadler, teammate) raced me clean and we just raced hard for it. I just can’t believe this. I’ve just got to thank God for giving me this platform to perform. I can’t believe this. I’m tired, whew. Thanks to all the fans here this evening, this is an unbelievable crowd, I just can’t believe it.”
Meanwhile — Elliott Sadler and Ryan Preece expressed their thoughts on the incident after the race.
“Tonight is the closest I’ve ever been to winning a championship,” Sadler said after the race. “Having the lead against [Byron], the race is in my hands to win the championship, and when I dove down into Turn 1, we’d been running behind [Preece] for 10 laps. When I dove down into [Turn] 1, I thought he was going to give it to me, and I was going to slide in front of him, and he just gassed it and pinched me down, and that was it.
“I mean, really I got hired to race this race for the owner championship. We weren’t anywhere near the 22 (Sam Hornish Jr.), but we were racing the 9 (William Byron),” said Preece regarding the incident with Sadler. “It’s pretty much what I said. If it was the 7 (Justin Allgaier) and the 1 (Elliott Sadler) or anyone else that wasn’t in for that owner championship, probably, I definitely would have just laid right over. I’ve been an Elliott Sadler fan growing up, so if I wanted somebody to win that owner championship, or driver championship, it would have been him. Just, I can’t not listen to my owner. I can’t not listen to my, the guy who’s paying you in the end, so it’s just a tough deal. It’s crappy in the end – but I hate controversy.”
Sadler slid back to finish in the eighth spot. Preece, who made a spectacular save in the ordeal, went on to finish fifth.
Byron will graduate from the NASCAR XFINITY Series and move into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series in 2018. The driver will take over the No. 24 Chevrolet at Hendrick Motorsports. Chase Elliott will move from the No. 24 Chevrolet and into the No. 9 Chevrolet. Alex Bowman will join the team to pilot the No. 88 ride.
Justin Allgaier was the third highest finishing Championship 4 driver in 12th. Allgaier started the day in 16th and couldn’t make a charge for the championship in his No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet. He’ll finish the year with two wins, 10 top five and 17 top 10 finishes.
Daniel Hemric was looking strong as one of the Championship 4 drivers through stage one. Hemric ended stage one as the highest Championship 4 driver in seventh. Shortly after that, Hemric, driving the No. 21 Poppy Bank Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing, had a battery issue that forced Hemric down pit road.
The costly issue kept the team on pit road for 11 circuits as they diagnosed the problem. The young racer will leave Homestead with a 34th-place finish and 13 laps down.
Team Penske’s No. 22 team will end the season with the owner’s championship on Saturday. The No. 22 Ford team finished one-point ahead of the No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet team.
“Great day. It didn’t look really good after the first stint. I didn’t have any brakes left. Not sure what happened. We’ve been having a little bit of a brake issue,” said Hornish. “I may have rode them too hard trying to get the car to do what I wanted it to do. The Ford Mustang came to life after we were able to make some changes on it on the first stop. I basically didn’t use any brakes on the last 155 laps. It was great that we didn’t have a bunch of restarts. I felt that if we did we might have had to makes some adjustment to run with Cole.”
“I guess when you look at the guys that drove the car and certainly Sam today with all the pressure on him. The 9, the 18 and 20, there were four of us that could win this championship and obviously the way they ran the race, the strategy was perfect and Cole Custer had a great car so congratulations to him,” said owner Roger Penske. “More importantly is when you think about Austin (Cindric), Ryan Blaney, Brad (Keselowski) and Joey (Logano) all driving this car during the season. We have to take our hat off to Greg Erwin and the guys on the 22 team because they did a teriffic job. We are happy with it. Obviously I hope I am sitting here tomorrow but at the end of the day this is Saturday and we had a great run.”
The car featured numerous drivers throughout 2017 — including MENCS drivers Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski. The list also included Sam Hornish Jr., and Austin Cindric.
The five drivers scored a combined total of four victories throughout the season.
The NASCAR XFINITY Series will head into the long offseason before returning to action on February 17, 2018 at Daytona International Speedway. Stay tuned to SpeedwayDigest.com all offseason for news and notes regarding the upcoming season!
About Me: Brett has been following the sport of NASCAR since the beginning of the 2006 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Since Brett was 13, he has had a passion of chasing a job in sports that not many get the opportunity of doing. He has been in the NASCAR media since the middle of the 2010 season. Since then, he has been a part of many racing podcast shows to improve his talents. He has written for racingonfuel.com and theracingwheel.com. Currently, Brett writes for motorsportsnat.com and TracksideChatter.com. You can find him on twitter @NASCAR_Brett.
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