19-year-old Sam Mayer appeared on the verge of a NASCAR Xfinity Series breakthrough Saturday (Feb. 18) at Daytona International Speedway. Heading off turn 2 on the final lap of overtime, he blew by JR Motorsports teammate Justin Allgaier off turn 2 and surged into the lead. A first career victory suddenly seemed within his grasp.
Seconds later, he was grasping the wheel upside down.
Mayer pushed past Austin Hill but lost control when trying to block, sending him hard right into the backstretch wall as the No. 1 Chevrolet flipped over. The resulting multi-car wreck ended the race and left Mayer thinking about what could have been.
“Unfortunate way to end the night,” Mayer said. “Because I feel like we were one of the best … I didn’t really see how the block turned out. Obviously, I turned upside down. But I feel like it was a clean block, and I think it was just a little offset, unfortunately. And I’ll have to look at it for sure to really kind of tell. I think, at the end of the day, I’m racing for the win at that point. So I kind of gotta do what I gotta do.
“But it was a little late. I saw it at the last second, I was clear, but I was just a little late, I guess.”
The incident prompted Mayer to go, “It’s my fault, again” on the radio, frustrated but OK after hard contact. It was the second time in the race he felt misjudgment on his part caused a crash; the day’s first major wreck came after contact between he and Blaine Perkins on lap 19.
“Early in the race, I got in the No. 07, and it was because I was a little late on my move again,” he continued. “Obviously, the reason I was upside down is because I was late on my move there. So I’ve got to work on that for the next time we go to a speedway, just because I have to make sure I can do 100 percent of what I can. Because that was about 95 percent… the other five percent wrecked the No. 07 and turned me upside down.”
Mayer was able to recover from that, part of a JR Motorsports quartet that led the majority of this Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner 300. He combined with Allgaier and Josh Berry to lead 67 of 125 laps, joining with Brandon Jones as part of a four-car freight train that ran second through fifth through much of the final stage.
But JRM split up in the final laps, choosing different lines before a caution came out for Jones spinning on the backstretch off Berry’s front bumper. That left just the No. 1 and No. 7…
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