HOMESTEAD, Fla. — After being named to drive a full-time NASCAR Xfinity Series ride with Joe Gibbs Racing for next season, William Sawalich will make his series debut Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
While Sawalich will drive the No. 18 Toyota next season, he is wheeling the No. 19 JGR machine in the final three races of this season, including at Homestead’s 1.5-mile speedway.
Sawalich, who won the ARCA Menards Series East title this season, turned 18 on Oct. 3.
“I’d say it’s a little bit of a late birthday present,” said during a media session prior to practice and qualifying on Friday at Homestead. “But I’m going to soak it all in like a sponge and use it all for the next year to come, as well as the next two races to come – Martinsville and Phoenix, and to build a relationship with Seth (Chavka), my crew chief, and hopefully everything today and tomorrow goes well.”
Sawalich had an open mind as he prepared for his first laps in an Xfinity Series machine.
“Yeah, I don’t know all of them yet until I get into the car,” explained Sawalich, who acknowledged he spent approximately 25 hours in the simulator preparing for Homestead. “But, obviously, a different car. I’ve been doing short tracks in the Trucks and ARCA cars only, so I’m going to be new to the mile-and-a-halfs, and Daytona and Talladega. I did the Talladega race in Trucks and got the pole. But only made it through Stage 1 as we had issues after. Yeah, I just getting experience in those certain areas of racing that I’m not used to. Also, just learning the competition level of all the other drivers.”
Sawalich will do double duty on Saturday, also competing in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.
“Yeah, honestly, I feel like it’d be tougher to do the Xfinity Series debut just on a standalone race, just only doing that race, as I’ll get the warmup with the Truck race (tomorrow),” Sawalich said. “Get the green flag stop in, the run of pit road, getting used to pit road. I mean, I’m still kind of new to that. I’ve only run 10 Truck races, or 12 Truck races total, so still new to that and getting a feel for everything as it’s a lot different from ARCA because I’ve done the ARCA doubles multiple times and got used to those pretty quickly, switching back-and-forth.”
Sawalich qualified 12th for the Xfinity Series race and 20th for the Truck Series race.