XFINITY: Allmendinger Holds Off Hungry Sieg for Championship 4 Clinching Win
On what appeared for the majority of the season to be a lost year for Kaulig Racing, the organization will battle for a NASCAR Xfinity Series championship at Phoenix Raceway thanks to a clutch win by AJ Allmendinger in Saturday night's Ambetter Health 302 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
"I absolutely love these guys and girls at Kaulig Racing," an emotional Allmendinger said in his post-race victory interview on The CW. "It's been such up and down, but what I love about them is we stick together. We keep fighting."
Allmendinger, who picked up what was at the time his season's best finish of second a week ago at the Charlotte ROVAL, was able to snag win No. 18 of his NASCAR Xfinity Series career.
"God, what a way to get to Phoenix after the year that we've had. Let's go win a championship, let's go," Allmendinger exclaimed to a round of applause from the crowd at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Incredibly, Allmendinger's win came on Kaulig Racing's team owner Matt Kaulig's 52nd birthday.
While the 42-year-old driver of the No. 16 Chevrolet Camaro led a race-high 102 laps on his path to his first win of the 2024 campaign, the win was very much in doubt in the closing laps as Allmendinger had a major challenge in the form of Ryan Sieg, who was looking to pick up his first career win.
Sieg would get alongside Allmendinger, and be credited with leading Lap 192 of the 201 lap event, but heading into Turns 1 and 2 of the next lap, Sieg nearly lost control after losing the air on the right side of his car while battling three wide with Allmendinger for the lead and a lapped car.
This would give Allmendinger a seemingly comfortable lead, but not to be deterred, Sieg began to claw his way back toward Allmendinger. But as Sieg was just about to make his move, the caution came out for Sammy Smith, who had stalled on the track on Lap 196.
This sent the race to a green-white-checkered restart, where Allmendinger got a massive push from Justin Allgaier on the ensuing restart. Despite pulling out to a solid lead, Sieg would rally again in an effort to pass Allmendinger for the win, but would come up just 0.156 seconds shy of his first career win.
For the native of Tucker, Georgia, it was the third near-miss of the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series season as Sieg finished runner-up at Texas Motor Speedway in a photo finish with Sam Mayer, and he finished runner-up at Talladega Superspeedway a couple of races ago. Saturday's second-place finish marked the fifth of Sieg's career.
The driver, who usually pilots the No. 39 Ford Mustang Dark Horse for his family-owned RSS Racing team, but recently swapped with his brother Kyle Sieg to the No. 28 Ford, knows in his heart of hearts that if the final caution didn't come out for Smith's stalled No. 8 JR Motorsports car that he would have finally tasted the spoils of victory lane on Saturday night.
"Oh yeah, for sure," Sieg stated emphatically. "We had the best car on the longer run, and I needed a longer run. And it was getting there. I just overdrove [Turn] 1 and got loose, and lost some of our track position. But I was able to gain it back, and it just sucks to finish second again with a great car like we had over in Texas."
So close yet again.@RyanSiegRacing earns his third runner-up finish of the season at @LVMotorSpeedway. pic.twitter.com/b2LUv96NaS
— NASCAR Xfinity (@NASCAR_Xfinity) October 20, 2024
Finishing third behind Allmendinger and Sieg was Allgaier, who gave the race-winning shove to Allmendinger on the final restart of the race. The driver of the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro sits 32 points above the Playoff cutline following Saturday's event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the safest margin to the cutline of any driver not named Allmendinger.
Chandler Smith, another Playoff contender, finished fourth, and with the solid run, was able to lock down the fourth, and final place above the cutline with two races remaining in the Round of 8 of the Playoffs. Smith is now eight points ahead of Austin Hill for the final Playoff transfer spot.
Jesse Love sits 13 points behind the cutline, in sixth in the standings, while Sam Mayer is 23 markers back in seventh, and Sammy Smith, who caused the final caution of the evening, is 53 points outside of the cutline.
Parker Kligerman who, like Sieg, came bitterly close to his first career win last weekend at the Charlotte ROVAL, put in another solid performance on Saturday night as he finished fifth in the No. 48 Big Machine Racing Chevrolet.
Love, Riley Herbst, Cole Custer, Sheldon Creed, and Hill rounded out the top-10 finishers in the Ambetter Health 302 at Las Vegas.
Up next for the NASCAR Xfinity Series is the Credit One NASCAR Amex Credit Card 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday, October 26. That race, which will serve as the second of three races in the Xfinity Series Round of 8 of the Playoffs, will be televised on The CW with coverage beginning at 4:00 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of that race.
Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.