It’s a good week to be Sam Mayer.
The JR Motorsports NASCAR Xfinity Series driver is fresh off his 19th birthday, which he celebrated Sunday (June 26), the day after he finished fifth at Nashville Superspeedway. That made for his eighth top five in the last 10 races.
Now, the Xfinity Series heads to a special place for Mayer: home.
The series’ next takes Mayer and his competitors to Road America, the 4-mile road course in Elkhart Lake, Wis., located less than an hour from his hometown of Franklin, Wis.
Not only is it Mayer’s home NASCAR track, it’s also the location of his earliest vivid racing memory nine years ago.
“My dad (Scott Mayer) was racing the (NASCAR Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series) race up there,” Mayer told Frontstretch. “His teammate (Brendon Hartley) carried the team very well and carried them to their first win of the year and got to victory lane. And it’s very special because I was up there. Obviously, it was my first real memory with them because it was the first time I was at the track with them.”
So of course it would be special for Mayer to get his first career Xfinity Series win at the road course.
That’s right.
It maybe surprising, but Mayer, who signed with JR Motorsports to drive a Late Model at the age of 15, has championships in the ARCA Menards Series East and K&N Pro Series East and won in just his seventh NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start (Bristol Motor Speedway, 2020), hasn’t managed an Xfinity win yet.
Saturday’s visit to Road America will be his 34th start, the equivalent of one full season plus one race.
With his hot streak of top fives over the last two months, Mayer doesn’t seem too surprised he hasn’t taken an Xfinity checkered flag yet.
“Obviously, the racecar driver in me is gonna say, ‘Yeah, I want to go out there and win every single weekend.’” Mayer said. “That’s what everybody does. But you have to kind of put your expectations and everything in kind of a box and realize like what you have and what you can get out of it. And I think going into it, I didn’t have the experience level and the knowledge to go out there and just go and win races right out of the gate.”
Mayer’s Xfinity debut came a year ago this week, in race No. 16 at Pocono Raceway.
Mayer took over the No. 8 Chevrolet after it had spent the first half of the season with Josh Berry, an accomplished Late Model driver with previous Xfinity experience who is also more than a decade older than…
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