BRISTOL, Tenn. — Entering Friday’s finale 43 points back, Cole Custer’s hopes at the NASCAR Xfinity Series regular-season title looked bleak.
Pitting with a flat tire after just three laps, his odds seemed nearly impossible.
But suddenly, things took a turn for race and series leader Justin Allgaier.
Navigating traffic on lap 52, Austin Green hit the wall in front of him and came down the track, clipping off Allgaier’s bumper cover before taking out Parker Retzlaff. That forced Allgaier to pit and surrender his lead.
Restarting from mid-pack, he got back up to third, but on lap 153, it went from bad to worse for the 25-time Xfinity winner. Racing Sheldon Creed for position, the two made contact exiting Turn Two, sending Allgaier spinning into the inside wall.
After several trips down pit road – including a trip out of the pits with a Sawzall attached to the front of his car – Jim Pohlman and the No.7 team couldn’t fully repair Allgaier’s Chevrolet. While he met minimum speed, he ran the rest of the event well off the pace.
Enter Cole Custer.
He climbed back through the field and took the lead on lap 208, leading the final 92 circuits to win at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and best Allgaier by three for the regular-season crown.
“I knew going through the field it was gonna be tough, but we had our car set up pretty good to be able to pass and work the bottom,” Custer said. “We had a really fast car to be able to make passes. It was tough. We had to use the bumper a little bit to try to make passes, but we had a good enough car to be able to sustain a run on the bottom and be able to complete some passes.
“That’s a good team with that 7 team and it would have been a really good race if they didn’t have whatever problems they had. I’ve always liked racing Justin. It’s just bad luck for them, I guess, but it’s a testament to our team, what we bring to the racetrack every single weekend. Any given weekend we can win. It’s been a tough month-and-a-half, but I know when we get our stuff right, we’re gonna be up there fighting for wins and fighting for a championship.”
It had been an up-and-down month for Custer since returning from the Olympic break. Crashes at Michigan Int’l Speedway, Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway took him out early. Last week at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l, he finished 21st.
Custer led the series heading into Daytona but surrendered it to Allgaier after the JR Motorsports driver finished seventh. From that point on, the regular-season title seemingly slipped away from Custer.
“We just wrecked a lot of stuff,” he said. “It’s nothing that we’ve really done wrong, just a lot of dumb stuff has happened. That kind of gets your confidence beat down a little bit, that you haven’t really put a race together in a while, so it definitely meant a lot to put this race together and be able to bring a really fast car to the track and know that we can go really put it to them in the playoffs.”
It’s a 10-point playoff point swing for Custer, who earned five with the race win and 15 for the regular-season title. Second-place in the regular season earns 10 playoff points, which is what Allgier ended up scoring after finishing 30th, 10 laps off the pace at Bristol.
“I don’t really have any words for tonight,” said Allgaier. “It started with getting the damage from the wreck in front of us. There was nothing we could do. And then, just racing, trying to get as many stage points as we could, and I think the 18 (Creed) came off the wall a little bit.
“I’m really bummed about tonight. We’ll go back and talk about it … We had the best car tonight. It was very obvious from the beginning of the race that it was the best car, and nothing to show for it.”
If it’s any consolation, Allgaier begins the playoffs at the top seed – heading to Kansas Speedway with a six-point advantage over Custer.