Notwithstanding the circumstances, any top-five result in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Ryan Sieg and the family-owned and operated RSS Racing team is an incredible accomplishment.
But, Saturday in Avondale, Arizona, the 37-year-old journeyman driver found himself having an impressively terrible afternoon at Phoenix Raceway, which somehow resulted in a fourth-place finish when the checkered flag was displayed mere hours later.
Having never finished better than 10th in 24 previous Xfinity Series starts at Phoenix Raceway, Sieg arrived at the one-mile racetrack for practice, and just missed the setup — running 25th in practice and qualifying a dismal 30th.
That, soon, would become the least of the Tucker, Georgia native’s worries.
After making his qualifying lap, Sieg returned to the Xfinity Series garage where an official instructed him to pull into a garage stall.
According to a crew member for the organization, NASCAR had pulled Kyle Sieg’s No. 28 Ford Mustang into the garage stall where the No. 39 was supposed to park, leaving the official to instruct Ryan Sieg into the vacant garage stall.
Little did the driver know that the garage stall’s entrance wasn’t level and featured a slightly raised curb. As the car was driven into the garage stall, it made significant contact with the raised curb and tore up the front end of the No. 39 SciAps Ford Mustang Dark Horse — killing the splitter, nose, and cross-member of the chassis.
Suddenly, the entire RSS Racing camp went from trying to find pace in their racecar, to making sure that the racecar was even able to take the green flag.
The team was forced to unload their backup vehicle and had approximately two hours to get that car fully prepared to compete in the GOVX 200 at Phoenix Raceway.
What happened next was a true display of camaraderie between the Ford Performance teams, as members from AM Racing, Haas Factory Team, and RSS Racing worked diligently to make sure that the No. 39 would be able to take the green flag.
One crew member who was involved in the repair process of the No. 39 Ford Mustang tells TobyChristie.com that about 30 different people were working on the car to get it race-ready.
Against all odds, the team managed to get the SciAps-sponsored machine onto the grid for the start of the event — albeit without much time to set up the car to their liking.
“The start of the day was not very good,” Sieg told Frontstretch. “We were pretty bad in practice, we just kind of missed it and then we came in here, one of the officials pulled me into the stall and we actually ran into the concrete ledge and knocked the front end off our primary and had to take it all apart and take everything off of that and put it on the backup.”
“We were able to get it all done within the time to get back for the race, and so just hats off to everyone at Haas [Factory Team] and RSS Racing, SciAps, everybody that comes on board and helped us today.”
The first part of the challenging afternoon, getting the vehicle in race-ready condition, was complete, and now it was all in the hands of Ryan Sieg to bring home a solid result for the No. 39 team.
While in his backup car, Sieg methodically drove through the NASCAR Xfinity Series field, and by the time points were being awarded at the end of the race’s second stage, the veteran driver had reached the top-10.
In the second half of the race, the mission for Sieg and the No. 39 team changed from putting in a solid afternoon to figuring out how close they could get to scoring that elusive first career victory.
Sieg continued driving closer and closer to the front of the pack, and during the chaos of the NASCAR Overtime restart, managed to sneak his way into the top-five, crossing the start-finish line in fourth.
“It was pretty incredible to come out of here fourth and have our car the best [it was] all day, especially for a track that I don’t particularly like too much. To come out here in a backup car and get a top-five is an incredible day for us in the RSS Racing No. 39.”
One crew member, who spent the day working on the No. 39 for RSS Racing, told TobyChristie.com about the fourth-place finish: “We had no clue what to expect, but it sure as hell was not that.”
It’s been a quiet start to the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series for RSS Racing’s flagship team, with some complications at Daytona and Atlanta that delivered finishes at the back end of the top-20.
In the opening four events of the season, the No. 39 has yet to finish outside the top-20, placing Sieg inside the top-10 in NASCAR Xfinity Series point standings heading to Las Vegas Motor Speedway — one of the team’s best racetracks.
“We definitely needed this,” Sieg added. “The first three weeks of getting wrecked two weeks and then just had a mediocre day at COTA, and confidence going into Vegas, where we run good, and Homestead, so on to better tracks for myself and the team. So, I’m excited to get to Vegas and try to get that first win.”
For a smaller organization like RSS Racing — which only has eight full-time employees between two shops (one in North Carolina and one in Georgia), any kind of adversity can be so much harder to handle with fewer resources than some of the mega teams.
But, a rebound of this magnitude for RSS Racing, is likely to give this small team some major confidence heading into the coming weeks, as Ryan Sieg continues to chase that first career victory that has eluded him throughout his 371 NASCAR Xfinity Series starts.
