It’s been a less-than ideal season for Jeremy Clements, who only has one top-10 finish in 2024 and his worst average finish (23.1) since 2013.
But while Clements missed the playoffs in Friday night’s (Sept. 20) NASCAR Xfinity Series regular season finale at Bristol Motor Speedway, he started seventh, won stage two, scored 15 stage points and ended the night with a solid 12th-place finish. He did so after spending 78% of the laps inside the top 15 and recording an average running position of 12th — both of which mark personal bests for Clements this season.
Frontstretch interviewed Clements prior to Friday night’s race, where he discussed a variety of recent topics — including overtime, the (loss of) respect between competitors and the 2025 Xfinity schedule changes — as well as his 2024 season, approaching 500 consecutive starts and the challenges faced as an owner-driver in the series for more than 14 seasons.
Stephen Stumpf, Frontstretch: Walk me through your 2024 season up to this point.
Jeremy Clements: Oh boy, it’s kind of been a rough one, you know? I mean, we haven’t had the finishes that we’ve wanted at all. It’s just been kind of been a rough whole season really.
Eight races left, but our best finish is sixth at Atlanta, and then [there’s] a lot of good runs that got ended through wrecks or shooting our own selves in the foot. I remember Iowa, I ran out of gas out of nowhere, had a top 10 car that day; lost two laps.
And then just getting in wrecks that are not of our doing, you know. Just being in the middle of that 12th to 15th area, and then things happen. New Hampshire, we had a really fast car, and then we got ourselves out there at the end of race.
Just hasn’t been our year, to be honest. Been struggling to get the finishes we want. But I’m really looking forward to Bristol. This is a good track for us. Always love coming here.
Stumpf: To that point about the finishes and wrecks, overtime has become a hot button topic in recent weeks. As both a driver and a car owner, do you think there needs to be a change? Do you think NASCAR needs to step in with the way a lot of these races have been ending recently?
Clements: It’s unfortunate. Like last week, we had a top 10 going. Caution came out with five [laps] to go, and then all hell broke loose. Everybody just running into everybody, and I was a victim of that. Going in turn 1, got my rear tires picked up in the turn, ran into the…
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