BROOKLYN, Mich: With the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs on the horizon next month, Anthony Alfredo and his Our Motorsports are desperately trying to put themselves in a position to collect major points or pull off an upset win.
During Saturday’s Cabo Wabo 250 at Michigan International Speedway, Alfredo played a smart race, which put him in contention for overtime to collect his first Xfinity Series victory. Unfortunately, Alfredo’s attempt ran out of time with a crash on the backstretch that prematurely ended the race before the start-finish line.
On the flip side, Alfredo quietly earned his second top-five finish of the season when he registered a fourth-place result when the last-lap madness cooled down and NASCAR reviewed all available assets to determine the finishing order.
For Alfredo, the finish was a great boost to his season and gives his Our Motorsports team some momentum heading to Daytona International Speedway next weekend, a race that Alfredo has circled to bring home the checkered flag.
“It feels great. I mean, top fives are wins for us, relatively speaking,” Alfredo said post-race. “Obviously, we’d love to be standing in Victory Lane right now celebrating, and we are certainly close to it.
“So very thankful for my team, because they build cars probably a little bit faster than they should be able to, as far as the resources we have. And I always like to think I finish a couple spots better than most people think I can with what I got.”
Working on a limited budget has restricted Alfredo and his Our Motorsports team from benefiting from the luxuries of a technical alliance or continuously building new race cars, but Alfredo believes the hard work back at the team’s shop during the week has allowed them to close the gap—sometimes at unexpected races like Michigan.
Saturday’s 125-lap debuted a different race package with lower horsepower, which slowed the pace considerably around the 2.0-mile speedway. For the No. 5 team, Alfredo felt the change in the aerodynamic package played into their hands and leveled the playing field some that allowed them to capitalize.
“We just continue to punch above our weight and to recover from Indy with a top five and come out of the break swinging like this with a good finish gives us awesome momentum to go out and try to win Daytona and make the playoffs,” added Alfredo. “(We) got a couple stage points there as well and this new package for the Xfinity Series was interesting.
“It’s a learning curve for everybody, and I think that always falls into my hands, because it levels the playing field out. There’s less data and information that these bigger teams have, which, you know, we have zero ever so it certainly feels like we took advantage of today’s race.”
In NASCAR overtime, Alfredo restarted inside the top-10, but utilizing the top lane allowed him to pick up crucial spots to earn his sixth top-10 finish of the season.
“I feel like we ran 10th to 12th all day,” sounded Alfredo. “The strategy was going to play out really well if it went green to the end on fuel mileage, probably would have gotten a top-five (but) still gone one.
“We were able to execute well on that restart. I chose the top because there’s a few restarts, I picked up four or five rows by going to the bottom, and I lost all them and then some. So, it felt really nice to take a risk by giving up a couple of rows and getting more than that back, one more lap – who knows what could have happened, but heck, we were close enough.
“Certainly, thankful for the opportunity and blessed to be here.”
With five races remaining in the regular season, Alfredo is likely out of points contention to challenge for a Playoff spot, but Alfredo believes his team will have an opportunity to challenge for the win at the upcoming races of Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway and Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway.
At those venues, the superspeedway package will again be utilized, leveling the playing field and giving Our Motorsports an opportunity to better what they delivered on Saturday in the Irish Hills of Michigan.
Follow Chris Knight on X (Twitter) @Knighter01 or email at [email protected].
