Why Is Xfinity Not Racing This Week?

1. We’re four races into the 2024 Xfinity season. Where does everyone stand?

Four NASCAR Xfinity Series races are in the books, and there are two drivers who have asserted their positions at the front of the field: Chandler Smith and Austin Hill.

Smith and Hill have combined for three of the four wins (with the other being by Cup driver John Hunter Nemechek at Las Vegas Motor Speedway), and they are the only drivers to finish inside the top five and top 10 in all four races to start the year. They’re first and second in the regular season points standings, and they have stupendous average finishes of 2.8 and 2.5, respectively, through the first four races.

Between the two, I would give the advantage to Smith. Hill won back-to-back superspeedway races (as he usually does) to start the year, but Smith was a top-two car on speed at both Las Vegas and Phoenix Raceway. He’s led a combined 162 laps in the last two races, and he only trails rookie Jesse Love in laps led this season. After scoring his first Xfinity win with Kaulig Racing at Richmond Raceway as a rookie, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Smith and the No. 81 team win multiple races, if not win the championship outright with how they performed at Phoenix.

Cole Custer looks to be just behind the front two in terms of speed, and he’s won two poles in a row to along with top-five finishes in both races. Justin Allgaier and the No. 7 team also have speed to start the year, and he was only five laps away from winning Phoenix until the Racing Gods dealt him a rough hand with a race-ending flat tire.

Those four plus Love have shown the most speed to start the year, but one name that’s surprisingly absent from the list is Sam Mayer, who’s had a brutal start to the year with three crash DNFs in four races. But once Mayer and the No. 1 team can turn their luck around and start finishing races, they’ll be back in top-five, if not winning contention for the rest of the year.

The Xfinity cars will return to Circuit of the Americas next weekend, as the series has its first off weekend of the year. Speaking of that …

2. Why is Xfinity not racing at Bristol this weekend?

Bristol Motor Speedway has forever been a staple of NASCAR’s second series, and from 1986 to 2020, the Tennesse short track played host to two Xfinity races per year.

That changed in 2021, however, when the Bristol spring date was put on dirt. The Xfinity Series was dropped to one Bristol race…