LONG POND, Pa.: In a wildly chaotic NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, Jeremy Clements took advantage of a late-race caution to propel himself to a third-place finish in the Pocono Green 225, earning just his fourth career top-five finish in Xfinity Series competition.
Clements lined up 21st in his No. 51 Fly and Form | Repairables.com Chevrolet Camaro for his family-owned Jeremy Clements Racing team and like the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series earlier in the day – the Xfinity Series showcased an array of yellow flags which eliminated some of the strongest cars in the field.
With good cars axed from the field, the door swung wide open for some of the smaller Xfinity Series teams to take the opportunity and capitalize.
After finishing 24th in Stage 1, Clements and crew chief Andrew Abbott made headway during Stage 2 where they finished 10th and claimed their second stage point of 2020.
Still battling an edgy loose race car, Clements would charge up to fifth with 21 laps to go in Stage 3, but his day would take a setback after being penalized for speeding following a late-race pit stop.
Restarting 17th, Clements would hustle back to 10th with 10 laps to go and when the caution waved with six laps to go, despite a now tight-handling race car, Clements had moved to eighth.
In NASCAR overtime, Clements would restart sixth but use the advantage of the draft and the competition around him to surge to third over the final five miles of the race to collect his first top-five since the fall race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and his best race result since winning at Road America (Wisc.) in 2017.
“It was really awesome, we had Fly and Form Structures on the car for their last race of the year so it was big to give them a heck of a finish today, hopefully, they will do so more races. You know, showing up and racing like this its definitely difficult for us because we have zero engineering, no sim, no nothing. You kinda guess.
“Honestly, we weren’t that great today, we made the most of it and capitalized on the last restart. I’m really proud of my guys. We dug ourselves in a hole at the beginning of the year with blowing up and different things happening and wrecks, so this is definitely what we needed to get back up there.”
Clements said the issues his South Carolina-based team has fought this brings Sunday’s finish to the forefront and brings some much-welcomed momentum.
“I didn’t think we get that good of a run to be honest, it’s definitely a surprise and its really awesome,” Clements added. “I didn’t know if our race was going to be like the Truck race with all the chaos, so once it started going that way, I thought we needed to survive, and we needed to try and get a good finish.
“I thought for sure we’d get a top-10, but not a top-three. Wow. I’m really surprised and happy at the same time. I was hoping the 98 (Chase Briscoe) and 10 (Ross Chastain) just wreck each other and I’d win.”
Leading the Jeremy Clements Racing team is Andrew Abbott, a young crew chief who has seemed to gel with the Spartanburg, S.C. over the last 10 months.
“He’s been really great, he’s done a great job,” said Clements of Abbott. “He’s a little younger than me and we work well together. He’s smart. It surprises me how smart he is actually.
“His nickname is Panda, he looks like a Panda, he’s got a big head. He does a good job and I love him to death, and I want to keep growing with him and I hope he sticks around with us for a while to come and we get better and better.”
While every team has been affected one way or another with the COVID-19 situation, Clements says his team was able to stay intact – keeping all four employees on the payroll but said racing was a necessity to keeping the team alive –- especially since his team supports itself majority from the race purse.
“We left Atlanta from the race track and I knew it was going to be bad and it was going to be weird for sure. We only have four full-time guys. We never really laid them off. We let them keep working even if was just straightening up the shop cleaning. We were pretty much caught up for the most part.
“It’s been tough for sure. No money coming in. Obviously, we race off the purse, we need that. We need to be at the races to race and get that to be able to keep going. I’m just really glad to be back racing. I wish we could race every day. I love racing.
“I’m jealous of like Briscoe and those guys who get to drive for a big team. I’m proud of our effort. We get better and better and hopefully; we can go to Indy next week and can have a legitimate chance to get a checkered flag.”
P3 hell yeah! So dang happy for our team. Huge shoutout to Fly & Form Structues and @Repairable1 for being on board today with this beautiful patriotic scheme! Let go to @IMS road course next week and get a 🏁! pic.twitter.com/2lRMGo4tAu
— Jeremy Clements (@JClements51) June 28, 2020
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
