The 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series season has not been kind to Big Machine Racing so far.
Calling the team’s sophomore season a mixed bag would be putting it kindly, because it has been a real struggle. Saturday’s (May 7) Mahindra ROXOR 200 at Darlington Raceway was the one-third mark of the current season, and the team has regressed from 2021.
One year ago, Jade Buford had made 10 of the 11 starts for the team at this point. Danny Bohn ran the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway because Buford didn’t meet NASCAR’s requirement to race on superspeedways at that time. Bohn finished 19th before Buford took over the following week on the road course at Daytona. After the 11th race at Circuit of the Americas, the No. 48 car was averaging a 24.6 finish, scoring five top-20 finishes with only two DNFs.
After 11 races in 2022, the team averages just under a 27th-place finish, scoring only one top 20 and four DNFs.
Team owner Scott Borchetta elected to remove Buford from the car before race number nine at Talladega Speedway on April 23 in favor of Kaz Grala.
“We’ve made a very serious commitment to the NASCAR Xfinity Series,” Borchetta said in a press release. “Including our strategic partnership with [Richard Childress Racing], and at this time we need to evaluate all aspects of the team as I am determined to run up front.”
With Talladega being the first outing for Grala with Big Machine, it was already a lottery, and Talladega won. Grala was involved in a race-ending crash on lap 104 and finished 29th. Grala averaged a low-20s running position the following week at Dover Motor Speedway after starting 21st, crossing the finish line in 24th after falling two laps down.
Grala’s effort at Dover was the No. 48’s fourth-best finish of the season — a finish that would have been more on the average side one year ago instead of one of the better performances.
Borchetta noted that the team needed to evaluate “all aspects of the…
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