You couldn’t wipe the smile off Ryan Sieg’s (@RyanSiegRacing) face following Friday night’s Subway Firecracker 250 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. Sieg, in his family-owned No. 39 Pull-A-Part Used Auto Parts Chevrolet SS earned a career-best third in his 20th NASCAR Nationwide Series race.
The decision for the RSS Racing team to depart from the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series full-time in lieu of the Nationwide Series, after the launch of the 2014 season is paying off, maybe in more ways than one.
Sieg, 27, pushed Kasey Kahne to JR Motorsports’ (JRM) sixth win of the season and deservingly earned some accolades not only from his team, but from the potent posse of JRM.
Ironically, Sieg scored his first career top-10 finish in the second-tier series in the season-opener at Daytona in February, but Friday’s performance meant so much more.
Doing a lot with a little, Sieg, the Tucker, Georgia native has caught the eyes of many, including Dale Earnhardt Jr. In fact, Earnhardt Jr. and race winner Kahne interrupted their post-race media availability to thank Sieg for his efforts.
“It felt like a win,” Sieg said. “It was a really big deal, it was awesome to come back to Daytona and get our career-best finish. Hopefully it (Friday night) will bring some more sponsors. We have some sponsors here and there, but it would be nice to have a full-time sponsor, because we run full-time Nationwide, hopefully we turned some eyes.”
Earnhardt Jr., who branched out through his Twitter account that he was impressed with what he saw from Sieg dating back to Dover (Del.) International Speedway a few weeks ago praised the relatively calm and quiet driver for his efforts.
“I’m real proud of Ryan (Sieg). I watched him at Dover and he impressed the hell out of me,” said NASCAR’s most popular driver. “I haven’t really paid a ton of attention to him prior to that. He had a couple runs during the race at Dover that were better than anyone outside the top-five for sure. He kinda hung around and raced with the 62 and a couple of others guys in some equipment that’s far better than his. It was great to see him run well, because I think he does a lot with very little, so good to see.”
With his performance, Sieg also earned the first spot in the opening round for the Nationwide Dash4Cash next weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Series title Nationwide offers a stint of four races, where four drivers are eligible for a $100,000 bonus for being the highest finishing driver that runs full-time in the series. The winner also advances to the next round.
“It’s definitely going to be a tough one for us, I’ve never run Nationwide at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, we run OK in the truck, but we’re getting better and better each week. Cowboy (crew chief Kevin Starland) learning about the cars every week and I’m learning. We should be pretty good.”
Sieg, along with race runner-up Regan Smith, Ryan Reed and Jeremy Clements will duke it out for the bonus money on July 12. Following New Hampshire, Chicagoland Speedway is the second round
followed by Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the finale at Iowa Speedway on August 2.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
