Zane Smith, Allmendinger, Big Winners at COTA

NASCAR returned to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas on Saturday for the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. This is also the first road course race of the season for both circuits and it brought much better weather than last year’s race weekend.

 In a race that had ten lead changes among eight drivers and had eight caution periods, the man to talk about is the No. 38 Ford F-150 of Zane Smith as he swept both stages and went on to win on a wild finish at COTA. Kyle Busch, who had led the most laps, had the lead on the final overtime restart but was challenged by Alex Bowman and Stewart Friesen. For Bowman, he was looking for his first career truck win, meanwhile, for Friesen, he was chasing for his first win since 2019. All three drivers went door-to-door, three-wide, in the turn 11 hairpin to overtake Kyle Busch, which Zane Smith had the biggest benefit out of it as he was able to drive by all three for the win. John Hunter Nemechek was also able to roll his way into second place, as he finished 3.529 seconds behind Smith. Ironically, the same exact team won this race a year ago with current Cup Series rookie, Todd Gilliland.

“Once I got back up there, I was doing my best to read how those guys were racing,” Smith said in a post-race interview, “It happened like that in such dramatic fashion and had to come from the back, it‘s just a huge statement for this team really. Every single race this year I‘ve been in contention to win.”

“Felt like we deserved that one, but it doesn‘t matter if you deserve it or not, you‘ve got to be the first one to the checkered flag and we were not,” said Kyle Busch, who was able to claw back into third place, despite that he led 31 of the 42 laps in the race.

The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will take a week off, then go to Martinsville Speedway on April 7th for an 8 pm EST start.

Next up was the NASCAR Xfinity Series and a road course favorite was able to pick up the win, that being Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger. Allmendinger was able to keep up his road course reputation by leading 27 of the 46 laps and earning his first win of the 2022 season. Allmendinger continues on his career resurgence since joining the team in 2019, which has also included giving Kaulig Racing their first Cup win last year at the Indianapolis Road Course, also scoring his first Cup win since 2014 at Watkins Glen.

“I was hard on myself yesterday. I was not happy with where I put ourselves, the setup that I made for us,” Allmendinger told Fox Sports after the race. “All these men and women here at Kaulig Racing, between the Cup side of it and the Xfinity side of it, they don’t sleep during the week, they’re busting their tails. That’s why I’m so frickin’ hard on myself sometimes because they deserve to win more than anybody here and I just want to do it for them, so thankfully, we got one done today.”

Among the Xfinity regulars, the top four finishers will get to race in the Dash 4 Cash at Richmond next weekend, with the top finisher earning $100,000. Those four drivers being AJ Allmendinger, Austin Hill, Noah Gragson, and Sam Mayer, who won stage two.

As for the Cup regulars, Cole Custer finished third after being hit with a pit road speeding penalty in the No. 07 Ford for SS-Greenlight Racing, the same team he won with at Auto Club. Ross Chastain was in the mix driving the No. 92 for DGM Racing and led 14 laps. On the final restart, he was spun around in the pack entering turn one, causing him to finish 17th. Bubba Wallace ran the No. 18 for Joe Gibbs Racing and was running strong until having transmission issues during stage two. Wallace would finish 28th.

The NASCAR Xfinity Series head next to Richmond Raceway next weekend on April 2nd at 1:30 pm EST.