NASCAR Xfinity Series journeyman Ryan Sieg may still be searching for his first career victory, but that won’t stop him from trying to sneak his way into the Playoffs ahead of several teams of race-winning caliber.
It’s a mission not at all unfamiliar for the Tucker, Georgia native, who has successfully recorded four post-season berths (2016, 2019, 2020, 2022), all simply based on the number of points accumulated through the regular season.
There is one major difference, though, between those other instances and this season, where Sieg’s advancement into the seven-race, 12-driver post-season threatens to eliminate Sammy Smith and Brandon Jones, a pair of drivers from JR Motorsports.
The competition is much, much tougher just to make it into the top-12, and therefore Sieg finds himself needing to perform at a much higher level than ever before. Enter Friday’s Wawa 250 at Daytona International Speedway.
Sieg entered the late-August Xfinity Series event at Daytona just a single point below the cutline, after managing to cut the gap down steadily the two weeks prior with stage victories at Indianapolis and Michigan.
With the unpredictable nature of the 2.5-mile superspeedway, the notion that anything was safe and secure for Sieg, or his competition, was baseless. During the event, Sammy Smith was caught up in an accident that heavily damaged his No. 8 Chevrolet Camaro.
The No. 39 Ford Mustang, on the other hand, spent the first half of the event refusing to show all the cards in his hand, with the RSS Racing machine surging to the front of the pack in the race’s final stage, and battling for the race-lead.
Sieg was at the front of the pack coming to the last lap and had a realistic shot at being able to slice through the pack and chase that elusive first career win. Those hopes were quickly dashed, though, when AJ Allmendinger was turned down to the apron in Turn 1, bringing out a race-ending caution.
The 37-year-old driver was awarded a fifth-place finish, the second top-five of the year for the No. 39 team, and the 18th throughout his 356-race career. His closest competition, Sammy Smith, ended up 23rd.
“It’s exactly what we needed, to come out of Daytona, and come out of Daytona in one piece is always good, and then a top-five,” Sieg said post-race. “At the beginning of that race, I thought something was wrong with the car. The handling was off and it was all over the place, and then to recover and I just got over and drove the heck out of it and came home fifth.”
While it’s not the win the oldest of the Sieg brothers was hoping for, it was a finish that helped him make major progress towards securing his fifth NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoff berth, now sitting 15 points ahead of the No. 8 with four races left in the regular-season.
“That’s always good,” Sieg said about his points advantage. “We just have to finish off these races. We’ve had some struggles at the end of the races the past three and didn’t get the finishes for where we were running. We’ve just got to put it all together and keep gaining on that and make it into the playoffs and get more points.”
Events at Darlington Raceway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Watkins Glen International, and Bristol Motor Speedway remain until the beginning of the seven-race NASCAR Xfinity Series post-season at Kansas Speedway on September 28.
The long-time Xfinity Series driver will need to take advantage of his strengths and mitigate the loss from the one remaining road course in the regular season if he hopes to stay in front of the JR Motorsports duo and contend for a championship.
