(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
With five ARCA Menards Series victories to his name, a young, unpolished Sam Mayer made his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut last season for JR Motorsports. It didn’t go as well as he had hoped, scoring just one top five in 18 races. But, he had the opportunity to come back and drive for the team full-time in 2022.
Mayer has made a significant jump this season as he’s more and more competitive each week. He’s found consistency with the team, but he’s missing one key piece to the equation — a win.
“We’ve had plenty of success and getting really close to victory lane,” Mayer told The Podium Finish. “We’ve had tons of racetracks where we felt like we kind of lacked some speed, but we still managed to get a good finish. So I feel really confident in this Accelerate Chevy Camaro JR Motorsports team because they certainly know what they’re doing. We’re definitely really close to that win.”
Whether it’s an intermediate, short track or road course, Mayer is seemingly always in the mix. He has eight top-five finishes — seven of those coming in an eight-race span — and 11 top-10s.
And it hasn’t just been Mayer having success out of JR Motorsports. Each of Mayer’s three teammates have multiple victories this season with Noah Gragson and Justin Allgaier leading the way with three apiece.
“It certainly has been absolutely amazing in the shop and everyone’s really excited,” Mayer said. “No one’s changed what they’ve been doing for the last 12 weeks now… We’ve definitely had the success this year, it’s just a matter of getting me in victory lane as well, to join my teammates.”
After a spring filled with stellar results, Mayer hit a bit of a rough patch come summer. He finished outside the top 15 in four of five races, beginning with a crash and a 38th place finish at Portland.
Mayer recovered weeks later with finishes of sixth and seventh at Pocono and Indianapolis, respectively, but most recently finished 33rd at Michigan. He’s had plenty of speed this summer, but the results haven’t consistently been there.
(Photo: Sam Draiss | The Podium Finish)
“Racing obviously really ebbs and flows, because we started the year off a little bit slower kind of compared to last year, and then we hit our stride for 10 weeks,” Mayer said. “Now, we’re kind of a little bit kind of flickering off a little bit. But that doesn’t mean that we’re kind of just waiting for the playoffs to start and then we hit the nail on the head there.
“We’re just kind of waiting for everything to kind of go right again because that’s really all you can do is kind of do your job and wait for it to go right on the racetrack. I certainly have no doubts in my mind that we’ll be able to at least be playoff contenders at the very least, if not a Championship 4 contender at the end of the year.”
Mayer has grown into a potential championship threat alongside crew chief Taylor Moyer.
Moyer, 34, is one of the youngest crew chiefs in the NASCAR garage. In four seasons, he has one victory: a win with Josh Berry last season at Martinsville.
Although he doesn’t have the experience of many other crew chiefs, Moyer clicks well with Mayer. It’s the first time he’s called races for a full-time driver.
“We’ve been through thick and thin together at this point. It’s been absolutely amazing,” Mayer said. “We always have the saying ‘no easy days,’ because it seems like it’s always something every day. But, this team has a lot of grit. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about that grit with these guys.
“This team hasn’t had an easy the last three, four years because they’ve had like 14 different drivers in their seat for them. They’ve had it rough, and now having a full-time driver for the first time for them. We want to get that momentum rolling in a good way.”
With five races remaining in the regular season, Mayer sits eighth in points. Though he’s had a solid rookie campaign, Mayer is admittedly frustrated that he hasn’t won a race yet.
(Photo: Josh Jones | The Podium Finish)
“I have so much competitiveness in me that I want to go and win 36 races a year,” Mayer said. “At the end of the day, that’s not going to happen, but certainly want to have it more often than not. We’re going to continue to work as hard as we can.”
Beginning with Darlington next month, Mayer has a favorable stretch ahead. He finished fifth in the spring race there, and a few weeks later, he’ll be a favorite after winning the 2020 Truck Series race there.
Mayer crashed in both superspeedway races this spring, so those skills may still be a work in progress. But, he still has nearly every race circled on his calendar.
“I look at the schedule literally every day just looking forward to every single race track,” Mayer said. “We’ve gotten through the few that I’ve already said I don’t like and don’t want to ever be at again and we’ve gotten through those just fine. So now we have plenty of good ones coming up and I’m really excited for it.”
If Mayer can re-find the consistency from earlier in the season, he’ll certainly be tough to eliminate in the playoffs. And for him, a lot of that consistency is just staying out of trouble and avoiding crashes. If he does that, strong finishes will likely come.
“I feel like we can find our stride again and really kind of hit on all cylinders going into the playoffs,” Mayer said. “I think we’re nearly locked in if we keep at least a little bit of consistency. We’ll make the playoffs and then go from there to the Round of 8 and hopefully get a win in the Round of 8.
“We’ve put ourselves in a points hole from the first half of the year. Now we have to kind of dig ourselves out of going into the playoffs, and then in the playoffs, we’re going to have to end up winning. That’s what racing is all about. It’s going out there and doing our best to get that win and make it count for sure.”
Saturday’s Sunoco Go Rewards 200 at The Glen is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET on USA Network. Ty Gibbs won last year’s race.
