(Photo: Cornnell Chu | The Podium Finish)
FONTANA, Calif. — Cole Custer is hungry to start his 2023 season on a strong note.
The 25-year-old from Ladera Ranch is back in the NASCAR Xfinity Series full-time after three Cup Series campaigns. While driving the No. 41 Cup car last season, Custer made a one-off Xfinity start for SS GreenLight Racing, winning at Auto Club Speedway.
Custer hopes to make it two in a row at Auto Club Saturday to lock himself into the Xfinity Series Playoffs.
“I always look forward to Fontana. It’s always been a good track to me,” Custer said in a teleconference Tuesday. “It’s always been one of my favorite tracks because it’s fast, it’s worn out, you’re slipping and sliding around. You have a lot of options as a driver, so you’re able to figure out something better than the next guy, and how to get around them.”
Custer got back behind the wheel of the No. 00 for the first time at Daytona International Speedway, where he led a lap and finished ninth.
Saturday’s race will certainly be meaningful for Custer. Auto Club is expected to get converted into a 0.5-mile short track after this year’s race. It’ll be Custer’s last opportunity to win at his home track as he knows it.
“I think it honestly has put on some of the best racing that we’ve seen in NASCAR the last five or six years,” Custer said. “It’s one of the best tracks we go to, so it’s gonna be hard to say goodbye.
“It usually takes about 10 years or so for the pavement to wear out, so it’s hard to say. I think if you can go down the route of trying to get a mile-and-a-half that has some character to it that makes it a lot of fun and you can move around the track and run the wall and make something different happen.”
Things look much different for Custer since the last time he ran full-time at the Xfinity level. Notably, he’ll serve as a teammate to Riley Herbst, who’s in his third season driving the No. 98.
It’s the first time SHR has two full-time efforts in the Xfinity Series.
“Working with Riley has been a lot of fun so far. I think we’ve worked really well together and communicated very well,” Custer said. “We’re able to really bounce ideas off each other and it’s one of the best environments I’ve seen with that. We’re able to work together a lot, so we just have to keep digging throughout the year.
“This is really the first race of the year you’re able to really see what everybody’s got for the season. It’s a big racetrack, where aerodynamics and handling and pretty much everything comes into play, so you find out a lot coming into this weekend. We’ve just got to adapt fast and work as a team to make everything better and see what we have when we unload.”
Most of Custer’s crew members from last season stayed with the No 41, which is being driven by Ryan Preece.
Jonathan Toney, a longtime engineer at SHR, is Custer’s crew chief. Toney was an engineer on Custer’s No. 00 team from 2017-2019. Andy Houston will continue to spot for Custer, one of the few returners from Custer’s 2022 squad.
(Photo: Molly Gastineau | The Podium Finish)
“We didn’t have any problems,” Custer said on his crew. “As a new team with new guys all working together, it’s really nice to have a smooth weekend and have things work out good. Everybody worked together great.
“I really love [Toney]. I’ve worked around him for a long time. He’s been at Stewart-Haas Racing and Haas CNC Racing before that, so I’ve known him since I was a little kid, and he’s just a no-ego, super laid-back guy, super easy to talk with and I think it’s gonna be really good for us this year to work together and figure out how we can get the speed in the cars.”
Saturday’s Production Alliance Group 300 is also the first speedway race under the new rules package for the series. NASCAR changed the rear-end housing to eliminate skew, changing how the cars will drive.
Teams participated in a one-day test at the end of January at Charlotte Motor Speedway to feel the changes.
“I think just about everybody had the same comment about the cars being harder to drive,” Custer said. “They’re a little bit more on edge, so we’ll see if that’s just a Charlotte thing or how the whole year is going to progress. Three might be a lot of changes that we have to make throughout this year to make the cars handle how we want to, so we’re limited on track time and practicing and stuff like that, so we’re gonna have to adapt at the racetrack as much as we can and week to week really dig deep on what we need to do.”
A factor for Saturday’s race — the weather. Temperatures are forecasted in the mid-40s with rain. It’ll be even more important to come out sharp Saturday, Custer said.
“The biggest thing about that is you maybe don’t have any time to practice with the rain,” Custer said. “You’ve really got to put emphasis on your notes and look back on where we need to start setup-wise and make sure I’m as ready as I need to be just to make sure I hit lap one as hard as I can.
“It makes it a little bit more nerve-wracking because you don’t have that practice time to dial your car in, so with this new rule change it’s gonna be a little bit of an educated guess.”
Saturday’s race is scheduled for 5 p.m. ET on FS1.
