The box score shows that Cole Custer finished 16th, but that doesn’t represent the speed that the 17-year-old showed at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday.
“It was a great truck,” Custer said. “I can’t thank Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt enough for the opportunity. What a dream this is.”
Starting from the second spot, Custer ran up front throughout the first half of the race and looked to be set to challenge Joey Logano and Matt Crafton for the top two spots. However, on his first pit stop at lap 34, Custer would be caught speeding – having to restart the race from the 31st position.
The young driver worked his way methodically up through the field over the course of the run, returning to the top-10 and putting himself in position for another good finish. However, a trip down pit road at lap 141 would result in another speeding penalty for Custer. As a result, he would have to start at the tail end of the longest line for the restart.
Listening to the team radio, Custer’s No. 00 Haas Automation Chevrolet team was trying to gain as much as they could on pit road within the segments. When drivers are deemed too fast on pit road, it means that they have gone through a section on pit road quicker than they should. Normally when drivers get within the segment that their pit stall is in, they speed up as they know their pit stop will balance that time to be deemed long enough. However, when spotter Eddie D’Hondt was giving Custer the cue to speed up, that cue was given too soon.
Despite the pair of pit road speeding penalties, Custer worked his way back to the front and was running in the third position with 25 laps to go. With Logano and Crafton fighting back and forth for the lead, they would draw Cole Custer closer to them. Going into turn one, Custer would make contact with Crafton, causing Crafton to drift up a little and make contact with Logano. Both drivers would go wide, resulting in Custer getting by the pair to take the lead. Though, with contact comes payback and that was the story with two to go as Crafton returned the favor, spinning Custer on the frontstretch. The green-white-checkered restart didn’t offer much time for Custer to make up the ground, resulting in the 16th place finish.
“The first one – I actually called an accident,” Custer explained. “I was going to be punt him off two, and drove in hard, and it did. I knew he was going to get back here.”
Custer is scheduled to make nine more starts this year for JR Motorsports, and based on his performance at Martinsville, he should be in the thick to win in each race moving forward.
