O'Reilly Series PR

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Brandon Jones was made available to media at NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoff Media Day:

“The playoffs are finally here, and we can’t wait to turn up the wick and go get them this weekend at Richmond. After we won at Daytona, we knew we were in, and we have been working all season long to get to this weekend. The key for us and the No. 1 Pilot Flying J team is to be fast, be solid and advance to the Round of 8. That starts Friday night. We’ve had fast cars and a lot of good strategy, so we’re going to step it up and focus on advancing. That’s all that matters now.” – Michael Annett

"We are headed to Richmond Raceway this weekend. It’s a special one, because we are starting the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs, which means we have this awesome red banner up here, red splitter, and red spoiler. So, if you see us on TV, check out all the red cars, because that’s our competition this week! Richmond is a short track. We haven’t been to a short track in a minute, so I am excited to go back there under the lights, race, and get multiple grooves of racing going while beating and banging. Good, old short track racing in Virginia, and we are excited to kick off the Xfinity Series Playoffs this weekend in Richmond."

Friday's race in Richmond marks the first race in the Round of 12 for the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs. Nemechek is currently scored 12th with 2,000 points. This is both Nemechek and GMS Racing's first NXS Playoff berth.

Tyler Reddick and the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing team will enter the opening race of the 2019 NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs with a big dose of celebrity draw thanks to Gimme Radio and metal band, Killswitch Engage.

Nemechek fought with a tight-handling No. 23 machine majority of the 200-lap event. Nemechek raced within the top-10 most of the day but a late green flag pit stop on lap 168 for fuel resulted in an eighth-place finish, one lap down.

Austin Cindric and the No. 22 MoneyLion Ford Mustang team started in the fifth position and finished 12th in the NASCAR Xfinity Series regular season finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday night. Cindric will enter the NASCAR Playoffs as the fourth seed in the standings, -38 points behind the leader Christopher Bell.

"We set out today to clinch the regular-season championship and did just that and more. This is a huge accomplishment for everyone at RCR and ECR Engines and all the work they've put in this year. We have been focusing on Playoff points over the last few weeks, trying to capitalize on them as much as possible, so this will be a nice bonus to help kick off our title run at Richmond Raceway next week."

Christopher Bell led 154 (of 200) laps before finishing second to lead Toyota in tonight’s event

COLE CUSTER, No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang - Finished 4th - “We were just tight and we tried to make adjustments to fix it and it helped some spots but not others. It was a tough weekend because we didn’t have the best practice. It was hard to adjust for what we needed to do in the race. I was happy with it. I can’t than everyone at Haas Automation, Ford Performance and Roush Yates Engines enough. We had a great regular season and I am really looking forward to the playoffs.”