HOMESTEAD, Fla. – As Tyler Reddick celebrated a second consecutive NASCAR Xfinity Series championship Saturday night in South Florida, the other three Championship 4 contenders were wondering what could have been.
The 200-lap season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway saw a handful of mistakes that ultimately hurt contenders Justin Allgaier, Christopher Bell and Cole Custer.
RELATED: Official race results
The problems began with Custer when he reported a loose wheel on his No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford at Lap 58 and was forced to pit two laps later. Custer was able to use fresh Goodyear tires to earn his lap back, passing leader Austin Cindric on the final lap of Stage 2.
Custer was able to rally back in the final stage, taking the lead from Reddick under the final green-flag pit cycle with less than 40 laps remaining. The battle between the two drivers intensified in the closing laps. Reddick used his prowess to run against the wall, retake the lead from Custer and run away with the championship.
Despite bitter defeat, Custer was able to keep the positives in mind after finishing second in points in his final full-time Xfinity Series run before transitioning to the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford for the 2020 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.
“It was a cool race,” Custer said. “The three of us were really close there for a while. I could match Tyler’s lap time up there, but he made a good move up there with a slide job and I just couldn’t get him back.
“I just started pushing harder to try to close the gap somehow and I just got in the fence a little bit. It sucks, but at the same time, we can move on from it and we had a good day.”
For Bell, an attempt to make his final green-flag pit stop with 41 laps remaining served as the dagger for his title chances after missing pit road. The No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing driver led 37 laps prior to the miscue.
Although Bell was able to retake the lead with the time he gained with fresh tires while Custer and Reddick made stops, he wasn’t able to keep the duo at bay. Bell had to settle for a fifth-place finish in the race and third in the final standings before he moves up to the Monster Energy Series to pilot the No. 95 Leavine Family Racing Toyota in 2020.
“It was just a miscommunication,” Bell said. “I don’t know if my spotter didn’t get told what our cue word was, but I told got the cue word to pit and then all of a sudden, I started pitting and he said, not now, not now. But that didn’t matter whenever you get beat by 17 seconds.”
As for Allgaier, he admitted the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet lacked the necessary speed from the beginning of the race weekend in order to be competitive. Allgaier was never able to jump ahead of the other three title contenders, and scrapping the wall with less than 20 laps remaining was the final straw, finishing 14th.
“It was disappointing because we felt like yesterday in practice, the seven laps that we got, that our balance was pretty good,” Allgaier said. “We were excited about tonight because the things we worked on yesterday and in the shop and try to make better for our program, we had done.
“Unfortunately, tonight we were just way too loose and way too loose to really push at the speed those guys were running.”