Tyler Reddick led the final 19 laps and won Saturday’s Xfinity Series season finale to claim the 2019 series championship and his second in a row.
The top five was completed by Cole Custer, Chase Briscoe, Noah Gragson and Christopher Bell.
Reddick’s win is his sixth of the year.
Click here for the race results.
Point standings
Tyler Reddick claimed the 2019 Xfinity Series championship with a victory in Saturday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, successfully defending his 2018 championship.
Reddick led the final 19 laps around the 1.5-mile track after he passed fellow championship driver Cole Custer twice in the same lap.
The win is Reddick’s second consecutive in the season finale and his sixth win of the year.
Reddick is the seventh different Xfinity driver to win back-to-back titles and the ninth to win multiple championships. He’s the first in the series to do it with two different organizations (JR Motorsports, 2018; Richard Childress Racing, 2019).
Reddick will compete full-time for Richard Childress Racing in the Cup Series next year. He moves up with nine Xfinity wins in the last three seasons.
“It’s all about this race team, man,” Reddick told NBCSN. “I’m losing my breath, I’m that excited. This one means so much more. It was just a lot better year. It was really cool to go back-to back.”
Custer was the runner-up – for the second year in a row – after he bounced back from having to pit with 30 laps left in Stage 2 for a loose right-rear tire. He then unlapped himself by passing leader Austin Cindric on the last lap of the stage.
Christopher Bell finished fifth and Justin Allgaier placed 14th after he pit late for a cut tire.
The final 41 laps were eventful and began when Bell missed pit road in the middle of green flag stops while running in third, forcing him to pit the next time by.
“It was just a miscommunication,” Bell said. “I don’t know if my spotter didn’t get told what our cue word was, but I told got the cue word to pit and then all of a sudden, I started pitting and he said, not now, not now. But that didn’t matter whenever you get beat by 17 seconds. I’m glad that didn’t have an effect on the outcome of the race.”
Reddick and Custer pitted from first and second with 37 laps to go and Custer narrowly was first off pit road.
“It was crazy, when me and Cole were racing there off pit road I was trying everything I can to get into the corner and clear him but it wouldn’t work,” Reddick said. “I was just holding on for dear life. I appreciate him racing as hard as he could. We just went for it and it was aggressive as normal and it paid off for us.”
Very quickly Custer, Reddick and Allgaier were three wide for third place as Bell passed Austin Cindric for the lead.
Custer was the first to catch Bell and then quickly passed him on the inside with 34 laps to go as Reddick overtook Bell on the outside.
By 26 laps to go, Bell was in third, five seconds back from Custer.
Over the next three laps, Reddick and Custer would each scrape the wall as Reddick chased him down.
With 19 laps to go, Reddick dove deep into Turn 1 to get by Custer, who then performed a similar move in Turn 3.
But Reddick easily got by Custer out of Turn 4.
“I just hear(d) this motor just flying by me, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, so I’ve got to get off the wall and try and cross him over,'” Custer said of Reddick’s move in Turn 1. “It’s easier to do a slide job easier in (Turns) 1 and 2 than it is 3 and 4, so he probably timed that out and got it figured out, and then I tried to do one in 3 and 4 just out of desperation, but it’s hard to make it work down there.”
STAGE 1 WINNER: Chase Briscoe
STAGE 2 WINNER: Austin Cindric
More: Race results, final point standings
WHO HAD A GOOD RACE: Noah Gragson placed fourth for his ninth top five of the year … John Hunter Nemechek placed sixth. He ends his season with six straight top 10s.
WHO HAD A BAD RACE: Ray Black Jr finished last after his car’s engine expired in dramatic fashion on Lap 5 …. Tyler Matthews finished 37th after his car hit the outside wall hard on Lap 15 … Justin Allgaier’s 14th-place finish snapped his career-best stretch of 16 top 10s.
NOTABLE: Chase Briscoe won Rookie of the Year honors after finishing third … Chevrolet won the manufacturer’s championship … This is the first season that three Xfinity Series regulars – Christopher Bell (eight wins), Cole Custer (seven) and Tyler Reddick (six) – have won at least six races.
Championship 4 driver Tyler Reddick won the pole for today’s Xfinity Series championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN).
Reddick, the defending series champion, claimed the pole with a speed of 167.069 mph. It is Reddick’s fifth pole of the season.
Reddick will be joined on the front row by fellow championship driver Cole Custer (166.692 mph).
Championship 4 drivers Christopher Bell and Justin Allgaier will start seventh and 16th respectively. This is Allgaier’s worst qualifying effort of the season.
The top five is completed by Austin Cindric, Brandon Jones and Chase Briscoe.
“We made (the car) better (from practice), but I definitely thought I didn’t put together the best lap,” Reddick told NBCSN. “But it just shows these guys work really hard on these race cars this year … We’ve got a pretty good car and I’m really curious to see where it goes after five laps. I don’t really know.”
By Justin Allgaier‘s own definition, 2019 has been a “terrible” and “miserable” year for the Xfinity Series driver.
That’s not the kind of descriptive words you would expect to hear from one of the four drivers who will compete for the Xfinity title Saturday in Miami (3:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN).
But in the immediate aftermath of his win last weekend at ISM Raceway – which snapped a 39-race winless streak – that’s exactly how the JR Motorsports driver summed up the previous 31 races.
He did so while referring to his career-best stretch of 16 straight top-10 finishes.
“I still view this as a terrible year,” Allgaier said. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. Right, but compared to last year we just executed better. We had speed when we needed it. And things fell our way. The definition of luck is when opportunity meets preparation. The weekends we’ve been prepared, the opportunity hasn’t been there. The weeks we’ve had the opportunity, we may not have been prepared. Today we had both.”
The veteran missed out on the Championship 4 last year, a result of a “miserable” experience in the playoffs where he was eliminated in the second round despite five wins in the regular season.
Now he’s back in the final round for the third time in four years and feels he and his No. 7 team are “peaking at the right time” as he prepares to face off against the “Big 3” of Christopher Bell, Cole Custer and defending champion Tyler Reddick.
Together the “Big 3” have won 20 of 32 races this year.
“A lot of the story lines this year have been surrounding the other three contenders and they’ve been really strong and they’ve won a lot of races,” Allgaier said in a media release. “You can’t count us out. We’re going into this weekend with a new mentality and a new energy and we’re going to have a shot at winning a championship.”
Allgaier admitted Saturday he could have “easily” made the championship round had he finished second at ISM Raceway. But going to Miami with a win on his record has a dynamic impact on his mindset.
“If I would have gotten chased down by Cole (Custer) at the end and gotten passed, mentally that’s going to defeat you, right?” Allgaier said. “I think winning a race definitely makes next week a lot more enjoyable, and I think it puts us more in the conversation for maybe having an opportunity to go for a championship.”
Just like it was difficult for him to break the “Big 3’s” dominance in the regular season, Allgaier acknowledges the task before him Saturday if he wants to give JR Motorsports its third consecutive Xfinity title and its fourth in six years.
Reddick and Custer have won the last two races in Miami. Allgaier has never finished better than sixth in nine Xfinity starts on the 1.5-mile track.
“It’s going to be hard to beat them, there’s no question about it,” Allgaier said. “So I’ve got to do a better job of figuring my program out and what I can do to be a better asset to our team.
“I’ve been in this scenario a couple of times. This week’s going to be full of studying. Because I know we’ve got three competitors that I’m racing against that equally are ready to compete next week. Mentally they’re ready, they’re physically ready, they’re (in) fast race cars. They’ve had the speed all year in their cars. They’ve made a lot of mistakes. But they’ve had the speed.”
But Allgaier insists after his “miserable” year there’s “no pressure” on him in his effort to finally break through for a NASCAR title.
“It’s funny because the last couple of years, the years I’ve put the most pressure on myself are the ones that have been the worst,” Allgaier said.
One sign of his mindset?
Right before he left victory lane Saturday, his crew chief Jason Burdett jokingly asked him what they were going to do the following weekend in Miami.
Replied Allgaier: “We’re going to have fun.”
The NASCAR season ends this weekend with the championship races for the Cup, Xfinity and Gander Outdoors Truck Series at Homestead-Miami Speedway. (Watch Sunday at 3 pm on NBC or the NBC Sports app.)
Three drivers will leave the 1.5-mile track as champions.
For Friday, wunderground.com forecasts a temperature of 75 degrees, partly cloudy skies and a 14% chance of race for the start of the Truck Series race.
On Saturday, the forecast is for a temperature of 77 degrees, sunny skies and a 10% chance of rain for the start of the Xfinity race.
On Sunday, the forecast is for a temperature of 75 degrees, sunny skies and no chance of rain for the Cup race.
MORE: NBC to have multi-network coverage of Cup championship race
Here’s the complete weekend schedule with TV and radio info.
(All times are Eastern)
Friday, Nov. 15
7:30 a.m. – Truck Series garage opens
9:05 – 9:55 a.m. – Truck Series practice (No TV)
10:35 – 11:25 a.m. – Final Truck practice (No TV)
11 a.m. – 9 p.m. – Xfinity garage open
12:30 – 10 p.m. – Cup garage open
2:35 – 3:25 p.m. – Xfinity practice (NBCSN)
3:35 – 4:25 p.m. – Cup practice (NBCSN, Motor Racing Network)
4:35 p.m. – Truck Series qualifying; single truck/one lap (FS1)
5:35 – 6:25 p.m. – Final Xfinity practice (NBCSN)
6:15 p.m. – Truck Series driver-crew chief meeting
6:30 – 7:20 p.m. – Final Cup practice (NBCSN, MRN)
7:30 p.m. – Truck Series driver introductions
8 p.m. – Ford EcoBoost 200; 134 laps/201 miles (FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)
Saturday, Nov. 16
8 a.m. – Xfinity garage opens
9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. – Cup garage open
12:35 p.m. – Xfinity qualifying; single car/one lap (NBCSN)
1:45 p.m. – Xfinity driver-crew chief meeting
2:05 p.m. – Cup qualifying/impound; single car/one lap (NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)
3 p.m. – Xfinity driver introductions
3:30 p.m. – Ford EcoBoost 300; 200 laps/300 miles (NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)
Sunday, Nov. 17
11 a.m. – Cup garage opens
1 p.m. – Driver-crew chief meeting
2:20 p.m. – Driver introductions
3 p.m. – Ford EcoBoost 400; 267 laps/400.5 miles (NBC, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio)