Sheldon Creed drives into the round of eight following a 10th-place finish at the ROVAL (Photo: Jared Bokanoski | The Podium Finish)
CONCORD, N.C. – Sheldon Creed advanced into the Round of 8 in the Xfinity Series Playoffs by scoring a top 10 in the Xfinity Series race at the Charlotte ROVAL Saturday afternoon.
Creed, a 26-year-old from Alpine, California, narrowly got through to the semifinal round of the playoffs by beating out Daniel Hemric by just two points. Creed qualified to start the race fifth on Saturday morning. Over the first 20 laps of the race, Creed moved his way up to third place to earn eight points at the end of the stag.
Several laps into Stage 2, on Lap 26, Creed had fallen back to eighth place and he encountered his first real issue of the day when he and Justin Allgaier made contact while jockeying for position. The contact caused damage to the right front of Creed’s car. He fell back to 10th place after the incident but managed to drive back up to fourth place by the end of Stage 2.
The Richard Childress Racing driver had a smoother Stage 3, but did lose some track position through two cautions. The final lap of the race saw Parker Kligerman and Daniel Hemric finish the race three wide with Kaz Gala for fifth place.
Additionally, Kligerman and Hemric were fighting for the same final playoff transfer spot as Creed. Creed earned the playoff spot because Hemric finished seventh, which put him two spots behind Kligerman in the finishing order and two points behind Creed for the playoffs. Creed spoke after the race about his thoughts on the final laps of the race and about how he was able to advance in the playoffs.
“I don’t know if I was nervous, but it definitely wasn’t fun,” Creed said. “Luckily I had the 48 (Parker Kligerman) and 10 (Daniel Hemric) just two ahead of me and I could kind of watch them. I was kind of judging off of what they did, if I needed to make some Hail Mary move on the 20 (John Hunter Nemechek) and 21 (Austin Hill), but just kind of stumbled our way through this first round to make it so we’re really just fortunate that we had the luck we did at the times we did, and at the end of the day, we just need to bring faster race cars.”
“Today was really tough for a road course for us, so a lot of work to do but just appreciate everyone at RCR, ECR Motors, everyone at Whelen that’s helped us out. We have the Fox Parkinson research foundation on the car this weekend. Sonny Whelen was here somewhere watching and he’s had Parkinson’s for 17 years, so a really cool car for us to run today.”
“[I’m] just proud of everyone’s fight … I’m looking at points for the next one, I don’t know, we’re going to have to go win Vegas or Homestead. I have those two circled, we can’t stumble our way through the next one, that’s for sure.”
