Eb’s Edge: What You Need to Know for NASCAR Xfinity at Road America is by our Fan4Racing crew member and contributor, Brian Eberly.
Race No. 20 of the 33-race NASCAR Xfinity Series season takes place on Saturday afternoon on the iconic 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin aptly named Road America. This kicks off a critical time in the Xfinity Series season, as just seven races remain before the playoff field is locked in and three of the next four events will be contested on a road course, with Indianapolis and Watkins Glen coming on the heels of Michigan next weekend. Race No. 20 of the 33-race NASCAR Xfinity Series season takes place on Saturday afternoon on the iconic 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin aptly named Road America. This kicks off a critical time in the Xfinity Series season, as just seven races remain before the playoff field is locked in and three of the next four events will be contested on a road course, with Indianapolis and Watkins Glen coming on the heels of Michigan next weekend.
Eb’s Edge: What You Need to Know for NASCAR Xfinity at Road America
Much Ado About AJ
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Cup Series regular AJ Allmendinger has five Xfinity Series starts at the Wisconsin road course. In those five starts, he’s posted one win (2013), three top fives, and four top 10s. Road America is particularly special for him as it marks his first-ever Xfinity Series win. The veteran driver is called a road course ringer for a reason, sitting as the series’ winningest driver on road courses.
A few other drivers have their names etched in the Road America Xfinity Series record book: AJ Allmendinger and Alex Tagliani are tied for most poles with two each, Brendan Gaughan has posted the most top fives at four, and Justin Allgaier and Elliott Sadler are tied for most top 10s at five each.
AJ Allmendinger, No. 10 Leaf Home Water Solutions Chevrolet Camaro
• AJ Allmendinger has made five NXS starts and earned one win, two poles, three top-five, and four top-ten finishes at Road America.
• Road America will be Allmendinger’s fourth NXS start in the 2023 season. So far, he has earned two wins and one runner-up finish.
“Road America has always been one of my favorite racetracks in any form of racing I have done there. It’s a really challenging racetrack with all the corners and different aspects of the track with high speed and low speed. It’ll be different now with the repave, so we’ll have to get an understanding of how that changes the set-up of the racecar. It’s a place that I have always enjoyed and I can’t wait to be back there again.”
– AJ Allmendinger on Road America
Three races have been won from the pole or first starting position, most recently by AJ Allmendinger in 2013.
Matt Kaulig, Chris Rice, and the Kaulig camp know what they’re doing and AJ will be just fine.
Custer’s Next Stand
Cole Custer has gone to victory lane in two of the four events where they turn both left and right this season, coming home P1 at both Portland International Raceway in June and the Chicago Street Race in July.
“Road America is always a really fun place just because it’s a challenging course. There are so many different corners, and you kind of have a little bit of everything there,” said the driver of the No. 00 Haas Automation Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing.
“You have high-speed corners, slow-speed, so your car has to be ready for everything. The new pavement is definitely going to be different, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that changes things and how much the speed picks up. I still think it’ll be one of the best road courses we go to just because it has everything.”
No Repeats
Saturday will mark the 14th consecutive year the Xfinity Series has competed at Road America and there has yet to be a repeat winner. It’s currently the longest active different winners streak for the series, with the record at a single track being 23, set at New Hampshire Motor Speedway between the 1990 to 2009 seasons.
The previous winners at Road America are Carl Edwards (2010), Reed Sorenson (2011), Nelson Piquet Jr. (2012), AJ Allmendinger (2013), Brendan Gaughan (2014), Paul Menard (2015), Michael McDowell (2016), Jeremy Clements (2017), Justin Allgaier (2018), Christopher Bell (2019), Austin Cindric (2020), Kyle Busch (2021) and Ty Gibbs (2022).
Of those 13 drivers, just three are in the field this weekend with a chance to break the streak: Allgaier, Clements, and Allmendinger.
Last Time at Elkhart Lake
Last year’s Xfinity Series race on the road in Wisconsin saw Kyle Larson earn the pole, sweep the first two stages and lead 31 laps before being overtaken by Ty Gibbs on the final lap. The duo that finished 1-2 in 2022 are both in Richmond, Virginia for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race. Josh Berry, Austin Hill, and Brandon Jones completed the top five while a total of 15 drivers did not finish the race.
Playoff Watch
With seven races remaining in the regular season, there are seven drivers locked into the 12-driver playoff field via wins this season: John Hunter Nemechek, Austin Hill, Cole Custer, Justin Allgaier, Chandler Smith, Sammy Smith, and Jeb Burton.
Nemechek and Hill are tied with a series-high four victories a piece.
The five drivers who are currently occupying the remaining positions on the preliminary playoff grid via their points position are Josh Berry (+110 points above the Playoff cutoff), Daniel Hemric (+86 points), Sam Mayer (+78 points), Sheldon Creed (+49 points), and Riley Herbst (+26 points).
Parker Kligerman is the first driver on the outside looking in as he sits 26 markers behind Herbst in unlucky position No. 13. Kligerman has two prior starts at the 4.048-mile circuit, finishing third in 2013 and 10th in 2017.
Start No. 425 for JR Motorsports Driver Justin Allgaier
NASCAR Xfinity Series veteran Justin Allgaier will make his 425th start when they fire the engines on Saturday afternoon, which ranks eighth on the all-time series starts list. Kenny Wallace holds the record for the most series starts with 547, while 2017 Road America winner Jeremy Clements has the most among active drivers with 450.
Allgaier has made 11 series starts at Road America, parking it in victory lane in 2018 to go along with two top-five and five top-10 results. The Riverton, Illinois native has been stout at turning both left and right in 2023, recording top-ten results at all four events: Circuit of the Americas (P5), Portland (P2), Sonoma (P7), and Chicago (P3).
Saturday’s Minute-by-Minute Schedule (all times EDT)
There will be a plethora of on-track action on Saturday, beginning with GRIDLIFE at 9:15 a.m. and also including Porsche Carrera Cup and OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Challenge before wrapping up the day with the NASCAR Xfinity Series race.
If you’re at the track this weekend, be sure to stop by the concessions for some breakfast and a coffee, it’s some of the best racetrack food you will find in the country.
9:15 – GRIDLIFE – Time Attack 6
10:00 AM – GRIDLIFE – GLTC Race #3
11:30 AM – GRIDLIFE – Time Attack Finals
12:00 PM – XFINITY – Garage Opens
12:15 PM – GRIDLIFE – GLTC Race #4
1:05 PM – PCC – Race #2
2:15 PM – XFINITY – Driver Introductions (Victory Lane)
2:43 PM – XFINITY – Invocation by Donnie Floyd of Motor Racing Outreach
2:44 PM – XFINITY – National Anthem by local recording artist Anton Pietenpol
2:51 PM – Command to Start Engines
3:05 pm – Green Flag (45 laps – 182.16 miles)
Television coverage begins with Countdown to Green at 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC. MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will also carry the broadcast.
Stage 1 ends on Lap 22, and Stage 2 ends on Lap 34. There will be a competition caution at Lap 10 due to the track being repaved before this racing season.
The Kink Is The Key
“I think the most helpful thing I got from Trans Am, aside from laps on road courses, is just that the top guys in
that series are really strong and have years of road-racing experience,” Mosack said. “Being around those guys
made me a much better racer, and it’s certainly helped this year as I’ve gone up against a lot of really experienced
drivers in the Xfinity Series.”
Billed as America’s Road-Racing Series, Trans Am and, particularly, its TA2 division, places drivers in purpose-built, tube-frame racecars with handling characteristics similar to cars in the Xfinity Series and ARCA Menards Series. And with more and more national NASCAR touring series competing on road courses – Road America marks the Xfinity Series’ fifth road-course race of the season – drivers are using TA2 as a platform to sharpen their skills and hone their racecraft.
“The cars do have a different feel to them with the weight and the horsepower differences,” said Mosack about the variations between a TA2 car and an Xfinity Series car. “You can definitely hustle the TA2 car a lot harder, and it’s a little bit more forgiving when you make a mistake. You can attack the brake zones more and you can get off and on the throttle a lot harder. But I’m still able to approach the races the same way because you’re still using the gas and the brake in similar ways, so I feel like being good in the TA2 car definitely helps in the Xfinity car. It all applies.”
That application process begins in earnest on Friday with Xfinity Series practice at 4 p.m. CDT/5 p.m. EDT followed by qualifying at 5 p.m. CDT/6 p.m. EDT. Thanks to Mosack’s familiarity with the track, he already knows where to place his focus, particularly turn 11, better known as The Kink.
“The Kink is one that’s really hard to be consistent through,” said Mosack, referencing the right-hand corner between the Carousel (turns nine and 10) and Canada Corner (turn 12). “It’s a corner you always feel like you can go through faster, but when you try to, you’re on the verge of hitting the wall because it’s so close to the track. So it’s a very high-risk, high-reward corner. A lot of time can be made or lost there, but it’s also one of the easiest places to destroy your car. It’s one of my favorite corners of any track we go to. It’s fun to try to get the most out of it every time.”