(Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
LONG POND, Pa. — Sam Mayer and Riley Herbst each ran long in the final stage of Saturday’s Explore the Pocono Mountains 225 and stretched the race on fuel to record top fives at Pocono Raceway.
After Cole Custer and John Hunter Nemechek got together on the frontstretch to start the final stage and bring out a caution, both Mayer and Nemechek came down pit road to top off on fuel. At that point, their beds were made — they were going to try and make it to the end of the 90-lapper without pitting again.
Josh Berry dominated the race with teammate Justin Allgaier right behind him, but both were on the plan of splitting the final stage in half. Allgaier made the decision to pit with 33 laps to go while Berry came down with 29 circuits remaining.
Allgaier got bogged back in traffic and made contact with Joey Gase with nine to go to cause a caution. That worked in the advantage of Mayer and Herbst as both were in near max-save mode in the waning laps of the event.
After an incident for Connor Mosack on the following restart, it all came down to NASCAR Overtime. Berry led coming to the green but overdrove Turn 1, allowing Austin Hill to slip past and take the lead. Berry fought back, but while racing side-by-side on the white flag lap with Mayer, the two hit and Berry blew a tire and hit the wall.
Mayer, understandably, had mixed feelings after the race. He felt bad about what happened with Berry and wished a JR Motorsports car made it to victory lane — not Austin Hill with Richard Childress Racing.
“I feel really bad because I put my car there and risked that and didn’t even think about the outcome,” Mayer said after the race. “It’s tough to watch that — come around after the checkered flag and seeing that … it just sucks.
“JRM as an organization kicked tail today. The 7 (Allgaier) was really fast, the 8 (Berry) was really fast. We were fast, the 9 (Brandon Jones) was up front. We were a powerhouse today, and looking at the scoreboard right there, not seeing one of us in victory lane is painful.”
However, he viewed his second runner-up of the season as a positive. Mayer has battled inconsistencies throughout the 2023 season; he hasn’t pieced together consecutive top 10s since Dover Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway in May. But he hopes Saturday’s result is a step in the right direction with the playoffs around the corner.
“I think that putting ourselves in that spot and hopefully capitalizing on other people having misfortunes, I think we did a really good job,” Mayer said. “I don’t think we had a lack of momentum going into this, but I think we just had really bad luck. But it’s not because of not putting in effort.”
(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
On the other hand, Herbst snapped a streak of three consecutive finishes of 20th or worse with Saturday’s fourth-place finish. He said that he learned a lot about managing fuel and never questioned crew chief Davin Restivo’s call to stretch the end of the race on fuel.
On the final restart, Herbst had the opportunity to advance to the front row with the choose rule, but decided to line up third on the outside instead. In hindsight, he said that he probably should have taken a position on the front row, but managed to maintain a top five.
“I knew I had old tires and it was gonna be hard for me to get a good launch and exit off of Turn 1,” Herbst explained of the final restart. “Being third is kind of a difficult spot because the first two are going to choose the top, so you can either choose first row, which I probably should have done.
“I feel like we’ve had the speed. I felt like we had a top-five car at Loudon until I made a mistake. I feel like we should have won Atlanta — we were the fastest car there, and I feel like I messed up on the final restart at Nashville to win the race and we finished second. Every oval track since Davin [Restivo] came on board [since Nashville], I felt like we’ve had top-five speed and just haven’t really capitalized on it.”
