There are story lines galore entering the 2024 Xfinity Series Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway. After 5,116 laps making up the opening 32 races, it all comes down to 200 circuits in the Sonoran Desert on Saturday (7 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Age and wisdom fill all four spots this year. Three of the four drivers are at least 30 years old, and Cole Custer is the defending series champion. This could be the final hoorah for Custer and AJ Allmendinger in the Xfinity Series as both will return to the Cup Series in 2025.
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Justin Allgaier will add to his resume by making his seventh Championship 4 appearance, the most of any driver in series history. Austin Hill is the only driver in the quartet who will be making their first Championship 4 appearance after consecutive years of advancing to the Round of 8 with Richard Childress Racing.
In seven of the eight previous postseasons, the winner of the championship race was also crowned champion moments later. The lone exception was in 2017 when William Byron claimed the championship as a rookie and, ironically, Custer won his first career race. On the final restart of last year’s race, the Championship 4 drivers filled the front two rows.
Let’s preview each championship-contending driver and where they stand heading to Phoenix.
Justin Allgaier
2024 regular-season finish: 2nd
Playoff seed: 1st
Allgaier summed it up perfectly at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last month: It’s surprising that he isn’t approaching double-digit wins with the amount of speed the Jim Pohlman-led team has brought to the track in 2024.
Misfortune has struck Allgaier in more ways than one in 2024. His 16 stage wins are more than double the next closest driver on the list (Chandler Smith with seven). In the regular-season finale, he squandered a 43-point lead on Custer and finished second in the regular-season standings. With a disastrous opening two races in the Round of 12, he squeaked through to the Round of 8, where the No. 7 team returned to its normal form.
Based on prior history at Phoenix, Allgaier should be the favorite. He has a pair of wins and 18 top-10 finishes in 28 Phoenix starts. Had it not been for a punctured tire in the spring race, he would have scored a third victory. Allgaier knows the No. 7 team will be prepared come this weekend.
“If I have one race track on my calendar that’s circled, it’s this fall race,” Allgaier said after clinching a spot at Martinsville Speedway last weekend. “Not only because it’s a good race track for us, but the way that the spring race ended, I left there fully dejected, knowing that we had the dominant car and we walked out of there with a wrecked pile of junk and didn’t get to win the race.
“Knowing what we’re taking back next week, I have no doubt in my mind that we’re going to have a great piece, and we will see what we can do.”
Cole Custer
2024 regular-season finish: 1st
Playoff seed: 2nd
In Custer’s championship defense, he leads the series with 772 laps led and is tied with Sheldon Creed for the most top 10 finishes (22). Of the four championship-eligible drivers, the No. 00 team has the best average finish (10.6).
Custer returns to Phoenix one year later, hoping for a repeat performance from 2023. He led a race-high 96 laps in last year’s championship event, enough to hold off his three competitors in an overtime finish.
In nine Phoenix starts, Custer has four top-five and seven top-10 finishes. His average finish is a stout 7.6.
“We definitely have to go there and find something,” Custer said, who was the final driver to advance to Phoenix on points. “At the end of the day, I feel like we have as good of a shot as anybody. We’ve had fast cars there before and there’s no reason why we can’t go there and compete for a championship.”
Austin Hill
2024 regular-season finish: 4th
Playoff seed: 3rd
No driver started the 2024 campaign stronger than Hill, sweeping the first two races at Daytona International Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway. His third regular season victory didn’t come until September when the series returned to Atlanta.
Winning the second race in the Round of 8 guaranteed Hill a position into the Championship 4 for the first time in his national touring series career. The No. 21 team’s numbers are slightly down from Hill’s first two seasons with Richard Childress Racing as he ranks worse in top 10s (19), laps led (240) and average finish (11.7).
The advantage Hill has is he had an extra week to prepare for Phoenix virtue of winning at Homestead-Miami Speedway. While he has an average finish of 8.8 in five Phoenix starts, just one of those cracked the top five. The good news for RCR is it came earlier this season, and if that race was the championship event, he would have been crowned the champion.
“I’ve always said that I just want a shot,” Hill said at Martinsville. “If you can do that like we’ve done, you have a 25% chance of winning the championship. We’re going to keep our head down this whole week, do a lot of prep work. It’s a stout group that we have to go up against. We have to bring our A game, give it all we got and hope it’s enough.”
AJ Allmendinger
2024 regular-season finish: 6th
Playoff seed: 10th
Allmendinger shocked the field in the Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, leading 102 of 201 laps en route to Kaulig Racing’s first non-road course triumph in 2024. That single race accounts for 39.5% of the laps led for the No. 16 Chevrolet all season.
But that was a 1.5-mile, high-speed track, whereas Phoenix is a flat 1-mile oval that Kaulig hasn’t seen the results come to fruition. Chris Rice, president of Kaulig Racing, doesn’t sugarcoat the team’s lack of success on tracks similar to Phoenix. By having two additional weeks to prepare for the championship race, all the focus shifted towards Phoenix and honing in on the No. 16 car. The key, Rice believes, is to “look outside the box.”
In five Xfinity starts with Kaulig, Allmendinger has a best finish of fifth and three top-10 finishes. In the spring, he placed 18th, one lap off the pace. The goal is to just be in contention as Allmendinger finished 14th in his previous Championship 4 appearance in 2021.
“I think Chris would admit, we just have to run fast enough so we can win,” Allmendinger said after winning at Las Vegas. “We’ve been terrible at Phoenix.”