Sam Mayer beats Ryan Seig in Close Finish at Texas

“That’s absolutely unreal.”

That was from Sam Mayer of Jr Motorsports, who picked up his first win of the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series in the Andy’s Frozen Custard 300 at Texas Motor Speedway. Mayer earned that win as he chased down and passed Ryan Seig on the final lap and remained side-by-side all the way to the checkered flag.

The official margin of victory was 0.002 seconds, tying it for the second-closest finish in Xfinity Series history. Seig was just that close to earning his first career win in 342 Xfinity Series starts.

“That’s absolutely unreal,” Mayer said after getting out of his car. “This team, the amount of adversity we’ve had to fight this entire year so far and to come to a mile-and-a-half that I want to say I’m good at, but it took a lot.”

“It took every ounce of me for me to do that today.”

There were a couple of late-race restarts with 20 laps to go, as Seig led for 17 of the 18 final laps. He held the lead by 1.2 seconds over Mayer, but Mayer began to cut that away lap after lap all the way until the finish. Mayer and Seig raced door to door after Mayer caught Seig on the backstretch on the final lap. 

“Awe, it sucks,” said a disappointed Sieg. “We had a really good car. I just got tight, so tried to change my lines, do everything. I saw him coming, and I did all I could do, and at the end, I was just trying to run him up into the wall to try to win the race. We were so close. This sucks.”

“I’ve been second before. Too many times. But this is a good thing, means we’re running where we need to be in the top five.

“Just got to keep fighting, we’re right there, just got to keep it up,” he added. “We’ll have it in Victory Lane here shortly.”

Justin Allgaier was also met with disappointment after he led for 117 laps and swept both stages, but would go on to finish third, similar to last year’s race when he led for 133 of the 200 laps, but would end up in fifth.

AJ Allmendinger would finish fourth while defending champion Cole Custer would go on to finish 5th. Austin Hill, Ryan Truex, Sammy Smith, Jesse Love, and Anthony Alfredo would finish out the top ten. 

Sam Mayer also collects the $100,000 Cash Prize in the Dash 4 Cash. He, Seig, Allgaier, and Allmendinger will compete for the Dash 4 Cash at Talladega Superspeedway next weekend. That race will be Saturday, April 20th at 4 pm EST.