FONTANA, Calif. – What a difference a week makes.
Sam Mayer wheeled his JR Motorsports Camaro to a runner-up result in Sunday night’s (Feb 26) NASCAR Xfinity Series Production Alliance 300 at Auto Club Speedway, a far cry from last week’s trip to the infield care center after the No. 1 car finished the race upside-down on the Daytona International Speedway backstretch.
Speaking to the media, including Frontstretch, from pit road after finishing just 0.651 of a second behind race winner John Hunter Nemechek, the Wisconsin native was pleased with what was an up-and-down night that nevertheless ended on a high note:
“We were just as good as the [No.]20 at the end. I mean, we did not start off that way, we had a lot of work to do and our Accelerate Camaro got a lot better after we threw the kitchen sink at it … it’s a lot to be proud of, to go from a 20th-place car to a solid second-place car… I’m super proud of my guys for that.”
Mayer started the race 22nd after both practice and qualifying were canceled due to weather, and fell to 34th by the end of the first stage. A solid recovery to a quiet seventh-place result in stage two put Mayer in a position to capitalize over the final 60 laps – the final 60 laps of competitive racing at Auto Club Speedway.
He joined the rest of the field (save for Sheldon Creed) in pitting under caution on lap 129 and restarted on the very edge of the top 10. Two strong restarts on laps 133 and 138 moved Mayer into second place as the race entered its waning phases.
From there, says Mayer, there wasn’t much he could do:
“We were at least the same speed as the [No. 20] there at the end, it’s just all about track position. I came out of pit road ninth or tenth, he came out second or third… That’s what it comes down to, the little tiny details, and if I was second, third, fourth on that last restart we would have been a little bit better, but you never know.”
As the laps ticked down, Mayer got to within a second of eventual race winner Nemechek. He couldn’t make up that final six-tenths before the checkered flag, however.
Laughingly agreeing that losing by less than a second one week after wrecking out from the lead constituted “two different kinds of heartbreak,” the 19-year-old was still bullish on his future in the Xfinity Series:
“I can taste that first win there. It’s literally like 20-30 yards ahead of me and I just can’t break that…
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