Hemric Poised for XFINITY Run

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Daniel Hemric, driver of the #21 Blue Gate Bank Chevrolet, celebrates winning the Dash 4 Cash award after the NASCAR XFINITY Series Fitzgerald Glider Kits 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway on April 22, 2017 in Bristol, Tennessee. Photo – Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Following a breakout season in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Daniel Hemric is beginning to hit his stride in his first NASCAR XFINITY Series campaign.

Last Saturday at Bristol, the No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet driver produced a season-best fifth-place finish, grabbed his first stage win, and earned the $100,000 NASCAR XFINITY Series Dash 4 Cash bonus.

Through seven races, Hemric sits fifth in the series standings – 80 points behind leader Elliott Sadler – on the strength of three top-ten finishes. He’ll attempt to build on his strong Bristol showing in Saturday’s ToyotaCare 250 at Richmond International Raceway at 1 pm  ET on FOX Sports 1 – a place where he’s never raced.

Hemric is not worried about having to navigate a new track.

“The amount of teammates I have to lean on at Richard Childress Racing is going to be a big advantage for me heading into Richmond,” he said. “A lot of the guys we have inside our shop have run there a lot of times, they have experience in the day races and the night races, and have been a part of that scenario. Looking at the short track race package, we could take what we learned at Phoenix and Bristol and apply it to Richmond. On the backside of that, my wife, Kenzie, ran pretty well at Richmond in the NASCAR K&N Series. I’m going to lean on her for a bit of advice as well and make the most of the weekend.”

A major key to Hemric’s success this season has been his strong qualifying. He has a tenth average start and has begun a race lower than eighth only once all season.

“I’ve felt really strong about our short-track package so far this year,” Hemric said. “We’ve never really been that far off, we just have to maximize our speed a little bit differently. We’ve done a good job of having speed off the truck at these places. We have to put ourselves in position, maximize our data and the rest will fall into place.”