As the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season draws closer to the playoffs, the teams took to the track Too Tough to Tame for the SportClips Help a Hero 200, looking to dance with the Lady in Black for a spot in the playoffs.
This day came with some quiet fanfare for Spartanburg’s own Jeremy Clements – who by qualifying and taking the green flag, set the record for most consecutive starts in NASCAR Xfinity Series History (dating back to Xfinity becoming the title sponsor). Saturday’s race at Darlington – which he considers to be his home track as a native South Carolinian, marked his 320th since the series changed names 10 years ago and his 486th all time.
“It was cool. It’s a big accomplishment for us, and we’ve been giving it everything we have all these years to even just be here {in NASCAR’s 2nd highest series} and to try to be competitive. It is a great accomplishment for our team”, said Clements of the milestone.
Jeremy qualified in 25th position, and stated that the car was tight all through qualifying and practice, which at Darlington makes what is already a grueling race against the track itself an all-out war – especially in a field that was as stacked as this one with 3 Cup Series All Stars in Joey Logano, Chase Elliott, and Christopher Bell.
Darlington is very challenging, especially on a hot day like today where the track is slick and the car doesn’t drive the best. Today, our car would run well for a few laps and then get extremely tight, and then the tire would start coming apart. So, it was very miserable to drive my car today. It just wouldn’t turn at all. You’re out there trying to not abuse the tire so you can keep going and not hit the wall. You know, you only got a few sets to work with so you can’t just keep bolting on new tires every few laps. It makes for a real challenge”, said Clements of the struggle both for himself today and for any driver attempting to tame the circuit’s toughest track.
Unfortunately for Jeremy, any chance at a strong day in front of his home crowd was quickly derailed by tire degradation – an issue with the right front literally coming unraveled.
The first instance occurred on lap 31, when the second caution flag of the day was thrown for a piece of debris on the track in the middle of turn three. Around the time the yellow came out, Jeremy hit the wall after his right front tire blew, forcing him to pit for the 2nd time in the first 40 laps. The tire, upon inspection, had melted in one spot and was completely corded/unraveled on the outside.
On a separate incident late in stage 2, Clements had a left rear go down that showed to have the same issue, but not quite to the extent that the tire had blown. Early in stage three, the issue reared its head once more, this time, once again the right front, though caught soon enough to not have blown out.
Clements was not the only team to have issues with tires going down. They are a regular occurrence on a worn asphalt surface that is difficult to find grip on and naturally grinds down tires fairly quickly. Sam Mayer had a tire go on him after finally overtaking Christopher Bell for the lead with 9 laps to go in the opening stage. Riley Herbst had a right front go flat, sending him into the wall, where he suffered significant damage on the right side of his car early on in the first stanza. Kyle Weatherman had a similar incident in which he slammed the wall on the right side. With 5 laps to go in the race, Aj Allmendinger lost his right front and impacted the wall at a tough angle to force overtime.
The question remains whether or not there was a quality issue with Goodyear. But one thing is for certain – this most assuredly was not an isolated incident limited just to the 51 team. However, his team was the only one to have three straight sets of tires have the same issue.
Goodyear has quality control engineers on site at every NASCAR race as the sport’s official tire manufacturer. One of them came to inspect each problematic wheel from Clements’ car, and pointed out one possibility – that the car had too much camber.
If you are unfamiliar, race teams have the ability to adjust the angle of the tire. There are three potential options. One is positive camber, where the tires are tilted to where the top sticks out away from the center of the car. The second option is negative camber, which is, as you may guess, the opposite – bottom of the tire is turned outward, which puts the top pointed in towards the middle of the car. There is also zero camber, which is when the tire is not tilted at all, but is perfectly perpendicular to the road/race track. Depending on how sharp an angle the tire is cambered at in either positive or negative direction, it can give the car more grip, which keeps the driver from losing control and makes running down and passing other cars much easier. How much camber to give the car is dependent on the racing surface.
Darlington has high banks and a lot of bumps along the way. Drivers basically have to constantly keep turning the wheel to even maintain a straight line on the front and back stretch. So it requires a set amount of camber to work. But, there is a danger involved if too much angle is on the tires – called excessive camber. Which is what Goodyear suggested was the issue with Clements’ Chevy.
Excessive camber (or aggressive camber as the Goodyear engineer called it) causes the outside edges of the tire to shred and unravel, and eventually give out, which can lead to some hard crashes into the outside wall when it happens in a split second faster than a blink.
According to Jeremy’s Crew Chief, Mark Setzer, they did not add or subtract any camber in setting the car up at the shop in Spartanburg this week. They instead ran the same setup/amount they always have a Darlington. But, once the engineer continued to insist on it, with Jeremy already 2 laps down with no hope of a lead lap finish, he opted to bring the car in and take a degree of camber out.
He seemed to have made his point in doing so, as during the race’s last caution, Jeremy came back in, only to discover the issue was happening yet again with the right front.
Was it a Goodyear quality issue or not? I will let you be the judge. But it is just misfortune to have something like that derail your entire day at your home track.
“We have got to get our car to the shop and figure out what in the world was going on. There’s no way that all those tires were just bad tires. I just don’t see how that could be. We have to do some digging and some investigating”, said Clements.
“You know this deal we’re in. We made 15 laps in practice and, and half of those are coming in and out of pit road and stuff. So it’s really hard to see where your car is. You don’t get to make a long green flag run really until the race. So you find out in the race you have an issue, and by then, it’s too late”, he later added, insinuating that perhaps NASCAR should look into going back to the former practice format.
Jeremy ended up finishing the race 4 laps down in 31st position, which undoubtedly, like this whole season for the 51 team, leaves a sour taste and more to be desired for Jeremy.
“Thinking about that {the series consecutive starts record}, it’s cool and all, but I just want some results. Some better results and better luck. I just want to have a chance to race. Today we didn’t really even have a shot, so it’s just very disappointing”, said Clements.
Tire situation aside, the race came down to a battle between the dominant car all race long – the Number 20 Toyota of Christopher Bell, and Cole Custer. In the end, Custer had nothing in the tank to run down Bell, who led 108 of the race’s 150 laps. Sheldon Creed led 30 in a 3rd place effort, while Aj Allmendinger led 11.
A win for a Cup Series regular makes for one less chance at getting into the playoffs on wins for the full time Xfinity drivers, making things much more interesting in the home stretch. Currently, Justin Allgaier leads both the regular season and playoff points standings. Cole Custer is 33 points back in 2nd. Currently the only bubble driver that can realistically point their way into the 12 team playoff is Ryan Sieg, who finished 18th in Saturday’s race. He is 10 points back from Parker Kligerman, who sits 12th, 44 points ahead of the cutline with just three races remaining in the Xfinity Series regular season.
Next week, the series heads over to Atlanta, which might bode well for Jeremy Clements, since he notched his best finish of the season there back in February (P6). Green flag drops at 3:00PM on September 7th.
Cup Series
There were plenty of mixed reviews about the Southern 500 not being the playoff opener when the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Schedule was revealed a year ago. Certainly a track with nearly 75 rich years of history like Darlington and arguably the most grueling crown jewel event in the sport besides the Coca-Cola 600 deserves to have the distinction of being a part of the chase for the championship. Especially with this being the 75th running of the Southern 500.
Still, there remained plenty of enthusiasm and intrigue with an unpredictable track like Darlington being the regular season finale for a change.
Bubba Wallace, who was in need of a huge points day or a win to lock up a spot in the playoffs, got things started on the right foot for his number 23 Air Force Toyota team by claiming the pole on Saturday afternoon. But, although Darlington is a place where track position is a key, Bubba was quick to state that it means nothing to start on the pole unless it carries over to the next day and emphasized that his team would need to execute on Sunday evening.
From the drop of the green flag, Wallace continued to do everything right in order to achieve the goal. He led a total of 37 laps, unphased by the early caution on lap 2 when Martin Truex Jr got loose after some contact in the exit of turn one that sent him up the track into Ryan Blaney, ending both of their days. To add more ‘playoff chaos’ (if you can call it that when this is the race to set the playoff field..), Truex would have to wait and watch in hopes that he had enough of a points cushion to lock up one of the three remaining berths coming in.
Once the race went back under the green, a yellow would not fly again until the end of the first stage, which was won by Kyle Larson, taking the lead after edging Bubba Wallace with a half-second faster stop during the first green flag pit cycle. Once Larson went to the point, he began to assert dominance.
Kyle surrendered the lead just 7 more times over the rest of the race, sweeping both stages and remaining in front well into the final 137 laps. Larson led by as much as 4 seconds, and at one point had lapped all but 15 cars in the field, which was not a help to Tyler Reddick’s efforts to try and get ahead of Larson for the Regular Season Championship.
“It was tough, man. We were bleeding points to the five in the middle of the race. I was trying to think of what I needed to do to go faster, and it was really, really hard to focus on that stuff. I was just not able to really do what I normally do well in the car, so I was just kind of driving with one hand”, said Reddick, who despite battling symptoms from a stomach illness he had been dealing with all weekend, managed to take advantage of his last pit stop to edge Larson by just a single point for the 2024 Regular Season championship, making him the “1 seed” when the playoffs start next week.
As tough as it was for Reddick to focus and win the championship, things were likely much tougher for Kyle Larson but the time the checker waved. He dominated the race for 263 laps, and appeared to be well on his way to winning both the race and the regular season championship. Until Darlington finally became the beautiful and chaotic Lady in Black we all know and love.
At lap 315, just over 50 to go, Carson Hocevar lost the back end of the car and went around in turn 4, bringing out the 2nd caution of the race that was not for a stage break. Given the trend of the last few weeks, every fan and worker in the venue knew that would not be the last one.
Less than 10 laps later, Todd Gilliland squeezed Chris Buescher up into the wall coming off turn 2, which led to what may have been a retaliation. Buescher allegedly bounced off the wall and got into Gilliland’s right rear, which hooked him hard right and into the fence in the middle of the backstretch for the 3rd non-stage caution. After restarting with 40 to go, trouble reared its head once again as Carson Hocevar had a right front tire go down, sending him hard into the wall and putting debris on the track to prompt a slowdown.
That caution would be the one that changed the entire ending of the race. The leaders all pitted, and thanks to a gamble by Ross Chastain, he ended up restarting as the leader, albeit on older tires. On the backstretch, with Kyle Larson side by side battling for 2nd with Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe got a run and darted to the bottom of the track going into turn three. With that momentum, he was able to slingshot from 4th all the way to the lead.
But, there was still some drama to be had. The very next lap, the calamity corner that is turn 2 struck violently when Josh Berry, who was caught in the middle of a three wide battle with Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs, was forced up the track and ran out of room, pushing Gibbs into the wall. When Ty bounced off, he came down into Berry and turned him around, leading to a huge pileup. In total, 7 cars were involved – but none more significant than Bubba Wallace.
Bubba suffered significant damage to his nose and right rear in the ruckus, which left his already dwindling playoff hopes running on a prayer. That prayer ultimately was not answered as the pole sitter would end up finishing 16th, 27 points below the cutline.
The green flag would drop for the final time with 17 laps to go, and from there the race devolved into a battle between two drivers needing a win to steal one of the 2 remaining playoff spots – Chase Briscoe and Kyle Busch.
Busch pulled to within 2 tenths of a second with 10 laps to go before falling off and losing 2 tenths. In the end, despite closing the gap a second time after the 14 brushed the wall, the number 8 simply ran out of laps and Briscoe dashed to his first win of 2024, locking up a playoff spot and finishing off the hopes of another championship run for Kyle Busch.
“I love the ‘game seven’ heavy pressure moment. For whatever reason, I just feel like I do a lot better under a lot of pressure. I put a lot of pressure on myself just going into this week. Last week at Daytona was the worst race in my entire career. I was embarrassed. so embarrassed. I didnlt even want to talk about last week. I just knew I wanted to make it up to my team this week. I knew it was going to be one of those do or die moments”, said Briscoe of his win, which is not only huge for him, but for the entire team at Stewart-Haas Racing, who will be closing its doors following the finale at Phoenix in 10 weeks.
“We talked about it before the race today. It was the last bullet in the chamber. We knew that this was going to be a really good opportunity for us just based on how we raced in the spring, and if we could just get our car a little bit better, and if we executed all night long, I knew we were going to be in the mix. We did execute, and we were obviously in the mix at the end”, Briscoe later added.
Regarding the win and what it means for Stewart-Haas in particular, Chase did not hold back his emotions.
“We’ve been ‘shut down’ since May, and they haven’t shut us off yet, so, I think we’ll be totally fine. Obviously, it’s going to be an uphill battle {the playoffs}, but we feel confident about it. We’ve known this {team disbanding} is coming, right? And the questions have been the same every week. We respect the questions because that’s what you guys do and it’s your job. But we’re going to, we’re going to continue to work our butts off. I told Lee Spencer earlier today that it’s really sad what’s happening because I’ve been in Stewart-Haas racing for eight years and this is the best I’ve ever seen four cup drivers work together; the best I’ve ever seen four crew chiefs work together.I’ll be honest. I feel like I’ve got four teams helping me for these next three weeks. And that’s what I’m looking forward to. I’m looking forward to going to battle with all four teams. We have a group of guys that support this 14 and they are going to do everything they can.”
Briscoe also loves the fact that he was able to mirror his first win at Darlington that came in very similar fashion in the Xfinity Series back in 2020.
“Christooher {Bell} gave me a huge shove on the restart to get me to the lead. Two laps later, I saw Kyle Busch behind me in 2nd and thought ‘you’ve got to be kidding me! I’ve worked 300 something laps just to get the lead and now Kyle’s gonna come and steal it from us!’ It was definitely deja vu because that Xfinity race I was sideways way loose at the end and he just kept running me down. I hit the wall like I did the Xfinity race with like two to go and I was waiting for him to do whatever he had to do to get in the playoffs too. Kudos to him for racing me super, super clean. But, the fact that both of my Darlington wins have come trying to hold off Kyle Busch is pretty cool from just a personal note because that guy is one of the greatest of all time.”
With the Lady in Black tamed for now, the NASCAR Cup Series season rolls on next week to the high banks and higher speeds of Atlanta Motor Speedway for the first race of the Round of 16. Green flag for the 2024 playoffs is set to drop at 3:00 on Sunday with the TV broadcast on USA Network.
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