COLE CUSTER | RILEY HERBST
Talladega NASCAR Xfinity Series Advance
NASCAR Xfinity Series Overview
- Event: United Rentals 250 (Round 28 of 33)
- Date: Saturday, Oct. 5
- Location: Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway
- Layout: 2.66-mile oval
- Time/TV/Radio: 4 p.m. EDT on CW/MRN/SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Cole Custer Notes of Interest
- Reigning NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Cole Custer is ready to continue his playoff journey during this weekend’s United Rentals 250 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. He got off to a strong start to his championship run with a second-place finish last Saturday in the Round of 12 opener at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City. After qualifying third, Custer looked to be on his way to back-to-back wins and his third of the 2024 season, having led four times for a total of 48 laps. He was leading the race with three laps to go when Aric Almirola got by him and went on to win the race. Custer ended up second just .660 of a second behind Almirola. While not a win that would have locked him into the Round of 8, Custer enjoyed a good points day with third-place finishes in the opening two stages that earned him 16 bonus points. He now sits on top of the playoff leaderboard with 2,079 points, 41 above the top-eight cutoff. He has a five-point advantage over second-place Chandler Smith and a 15-point advantage over third-place Austin Hill. Custer’s second-place finish was his 12th top-five of the season. The driver of the No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang Dark Horse now heads to a track full of unpredictability and ready for the challenges that lay ahead in the final two races of the Round of 12.
- Saturday’s United Rentals 250 will be Custer’s sixth career Xfinity Series start at Talladega. In his five previoius starts, he earned a best finish of fourth in April 2023 in the series’ only visit to the superspeedway that season. In five superspeedway-style races run this year – two at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, two at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and one at Talladega, Custer ran in the top-10 for the majority of all the races. He finished 13th in the February season opener at Daytona, 16th the following weekend at Atlanta, and 10th in the April race at Talladega. In addition to his five Xfinity Series starts at Talladega, Custer has seven starts outside the series – six in the NASCAR Cup Series with a best finish of 10th in April 2021, and one in the NASCAR Truck Series in October 2016, when he started on the pole and led two laps before a midrace accident ended his day. He’s led 10 laps in his six Cup Series at the track.
- Custer’s history at superspeedways has been a roller-coaster ride throughout his career, but when he returned to the Xfinity Series in 2023, he proved that he was back and better than ever on every kind of track. There’s no hiding that Custer had struggled at the superspeedways during his previous stint in the Xfinity Series from 2017-2019. In fact, it was his Achilles heel as he rarely finished a race on superspeedway-style tracks. But, when he came back to the series in 2023, he saw significant growth and improvement. He finished ninth in February 2023 at Daytona, fourth in April 2023 at Talladega, and then fifth in August 2023 at Daytona, posting his career-best finish at both tracks.
- On top of racing in this Saturday’s United Rentals 250, Custer will also be lending a hand in the Motor Racing Network (MRN) radio booth. He’ll serve as a guest announcer during Friday afternoon’s Talladega 225 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, which is the first race of the that series’ playoff Round of 8. The Ladera Ranch, California, native has been lending a hand to both MRN and Performance Racing Network (PRN) in recent seasons as he continues to explore options in broadcasting.
Riley Herbst Notes of Interest
- Riley Herbst has his eyes on the prize in Saturday’s United Rentals 250 at the behemoth Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway oval after coming up just one spot short in his most recent outing at the track. In April, Herbst qualified eighth and immediately showed his strength on superspeedways by quickly working himself to the front of the pack, leading three times for a total of 13 laps along the way. The driver of the No. 98 Monster Energy Ford Mustang Dark Horse earned a total of five bonus points via his finishes of ninth and eighth, respectively, in the first two stages. As the race was coming to a close, Herbst was running up front and battling for the lead with Jesse Love and Anthony Alfredo. He ultimately finished second, just .141 of a second behind race-winner Love. Herbst looks to improve his finishing position by one spot in his return to the track to score his second win of 2024 and secure a coveted spot in the Round of 8 of the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs. Still, a good points day could help extend Herbst’s one-point lead over ninth-place Justin Allgaier for the Round of 8 cutoff. Herbst stands just two points behind seventh-place Jesse Love.
- Saturday’s race at Talladega will mark Herbst’s ninth career Xfinity Series start at the track. Prior to his runner-up finish in the spring, he earned a best finish of fourth in the April 2021 race and returned that October to lead his first laps on the 2.66-mile oval, 26 in total, before an accident ended his bid six laps from the finish. Herbst has an additional seven Talladega starts outside the Xfinity Series – two in the Cup Series, four in the ARCA Menards Series and one in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. He drove to a runner-up finish in the April 2019 ARCA race, then followed that up with a fourth-place finish with 36 laps led in the June 2020 ARCA race. Since joining Stewart-Haas Racing in 2021, Herbst has finished outside the top-15 just twice at Talladega.
- Herbst’s success at superspeedways has not been confined to the Xfinity Series. In 2023, Herbst made four starts in the Cup Series, all on superspeedways. When Herbst competed in his fourth and final Cup Series race of 2023 at Talladega last October, he qualified an impressive sixth and ran with the leaders for a majority of the race. He led five times for a total of 10 laps and, in the latter stages of the race, he was pushing his Stewart-Haas teammate Kevin Harvick, who was leading. Although he was caught up in an accident coming to the checkered flag, Herbst was able to cross the finish line ninth, his best Cup Series finish of the season, besting his 10th-place finish in the Daytona 500.
Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang Dark Horse
While Kansas didn’t result in a win, it was a strong showing for the No. 00 team to kick off the 2024 playoffs. With these next two races both being wild-card races, what do you hope to take from your runner-up finish at Kansas?
“Minus the points, there’s not much to carry over. This first round has every style of track possible in it and you have to hope to just survive to the next round. Luckily, we’ve racked up points and should be in a good spot heading into the weekend. I think you saw it with Justin (Allgaier) last weekend, though – one bad race can erase that points lead. We have to be smart and play it safe at Talladega. Superspeedways have always been an Achilles heel for me. They aren’t my strongest tracks, but that doesn’t mean we can’t perform well at them. We’ve shown that this No. 00 team has a never-give-up attitude, and I think you’ll see that through the next two weekends. It’s never over until it’s over. You saw that when we were racing for the regular-season championship at Bristol, and that mentality is not lost in the playoffs. I’m thankful to have a team with the same goal and, hopefully, we can just stay out of trouble this weekend at Talladega.”
Superspeedway racing is a gamble in the playoffs. It requires a good bit of luck to survive and have a good day. How do you approach Talladega, which is known for being so unpredictable?
“Superspeedway racing is a challenge. It’s honestly a game of luck for the drivers, and it’s not always a fun game. You aren’t always a winner. There are things that you can control in the race, like having a fast car, being able to make aggressive moves when needed, and how well you can work the draft. Those are all aspects of racing that we can focus on as a team heading into this race. But, there’s also just so much you cannot prepare for at this style of track. There’s so much unpredictability. Anything can happen, and an accident can happen at any time, anywhere in the field. I feel like we were solid at Daytona and at Talladega last season, but it’s just a matter of controlling your destiny in these races and staying out of trouble. We had a strong 10th-place showing in the spring, too. You always have that luck factor at superspeedways and, in the end, you just hope you hit the jackpot.”
Riley Herbst, Driver of the No. 98 Monster Energy Ford Mustang Dark Horse
You performed well at Talladega in the NASCAR Cup Series in October 2023. You started sixth and earned a career-best finish of ninth. Then you followed that up with a runner-up finish in the Xfinity Series in April after leading 16 laps. What did you learn in both of those races that you hope to carry over to this weekend’s playoff race?
“To be honest, the cars are so different now between the Cup Series and Xfinity Series that you can’t really carry over much between the two. Still, we followed up that ninth-place finish with a runner-up finish in the Xfinity car. Those Cup starts are more about the experience than anything. That Cup start was really the start to my strong run of top-fives at the end of the season last year. I went in there having no worries and just focused on learning. I ended up running top-five and racing for the lead. My Cup Series start at Talladega last year helped people notice me. It turned heads. Then, I came back in April and led laps in the Xfinity Series to finish second. We’re coming into our own on superspeedways, but we still have to be smart this weekend. We’re above the cutline right now, and we don’t want to ruin that. Hopefully we can win and just put the points racing to rest.”
Given this is the biggest superspeedway on the NASCAR circuit, where anything can happen, how do you prepare for Talladega?
“You can’t really prepare as much for any superspeedway-style race – so Daytona, Talladega, and Atlanta are all big unknowns in our schedule. While you can try to figure out the handling and make sure you have speed, a lot of these races are up to luck. It’s like gambling in Vegas, sometimes you’re a big winner and sometimes you’re just not. These are wild cards on our schedule. You could be having the best day of your racing career and be taken out by a wreck not of your own doing due to the pack-style racing. We come up with plans for how we hope the race weekend will run, but you also have to be ready to change plans at a moment’s notice. The No. 98 Monster Energy team has brought fast cars not only to superspeedways, but almost every race this season, so I know we can be fast. We just have to be smart and stay out of trouble if we want to be there at the end. Hopefully, we can do just that.”
