It’s been a long road to get to this moment for journeyman driver Ryan Ellis, who, after 13 years of trying and 175 NASCAR National Series starts, finally collected his first career top-10 result in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series event at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Throughout the years, the Ashburn, Virginia-native has been juggled between several different organizations and series, and at one point in his racing career took on a gig as the PR representative for Matt DiBenedetto and NASCAR Cup Series team GoFas Racing.
Since jumping deeper into the motorsports pool again in 2021, as a driver, Ellis has gotten closer and closer to collecting that coveted top-10 finish, and along the way has had some brutally close calls.
Before Saturday, Ellis had come within a single spot of removing that pesky goose-egg from the top-10 column on his stat line, collecting a pair of 11th-place finishes at superspeedways with Alpha Prime Racing in 2023 (Talladega) and 2024 (Daytona). Not to mention the five 13th-place finishes, and the 12 total top 15s.
With the difficult hand that the NASCAR Xfinity Series has dealt him over the last half-decade, there was no containing the joy when Ellis climbed from his No. 71 Zeroes Beverages DGM Racing Chevrolet following, quite possibly, the best moment of his career.
“Well, I cried basically from before I crossed the line that Tab [Boyd] was yelling at me to cross,” Ellis said after the race. “I think, I don’t know how many starts I have, I’ve stopped looking, but I know I hated looking at my Racing-Reference page, and I care about this crap more than I wish I did.”
“So, I’m just really, really happy to be here, and be a part of DGM Racing, we’ve had really, really good cars, I felt like I’ve let them down a few times, same thing at Alpha Prime, but man, I don’t know, I’m not good at speaking generally, but definitely not right now.”
After spending much of the afternoon running just outside of the top-20, Ellis was surging closer and closer to the front of the pack when he and crew chief Mario Gosselin got lucky on their strategy, catching a caution in the middle of a green-flag cycle, and put him near the top-10.
It took quite a while to finish the tail-end of Saturday’s 300-miler, with several cautions coming in succession of one another, but as Ellis and the No. 71 team avoided the wrecks, they also made the smart decision to come to pit road at Lap 180, giving him a tire advantage over the top-four.
Despite slipping further away from the top-10 at one point during the race’s final laps, Ellis wasn’t really concerned about the loss of track position.
“I’m pretty good at confusing myself in the car,” Ellis said with a smile. “All I was thinking about was the choose cone and beating myself up over every single choice I made there, and felt like I couldn’t make a more wrong decision, so the fact that I was beating myself up over every decision probably helped me just not think about it.”
An emotional @ryanellisracing reacts to FINALLY securing career top-10 finish No. 1. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/OSYA8tL6PK
— Toby Christie (@Toby_Christie) May 24, 2025
Even several minutes after the checkered flag was displayed, and NASCAR had properly arranged the finishing order, Ellis was still flabbergasted by the achievement of securing a top-10 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
“I blacked out,” Ellis admitted. “I say that a lot and that’s probably the case more than I’d like to admit, but I had no idea how I got there, I feel like I body-checked somebody or somebody body-checked me. I don’t drink much often, but I’m definitely going to drink tonight. I wish I had better things to say, I feel like a big weight has been lifted off, I’m just excited.”
With Ellis positioning himself within striking distance of the top-10 in NASCAR Overtime, Ellis admits that he was definitely counting the cars in front of him more than he should probably admit, and even after finishing the race, had a bit of an intrusive thought.
“I was counting before – I literally blacked out because I don’t remember what happened where I was, like that’s probably a top-10, yeah. I don’t remember what happened, but I was probably counting a lot more than I probably should have been on those last couple laps.”
“Then I was like, ‘Oh, I hope we get through tech. ’”
Ellis made it through post-race inspection with no issues, but Sammy Smith, who finished inside the top five, didn’t. That promoted the No. 71 Chevrolet from ninth to eighth, further improving on the best-ever finish of Ryan Ellis’ NASCAR Xfinity Series career.
Now that the 35-year-old driver has that weight off his shoulders, Ellis will be attacking the racetrack looking for even more.
