Information By: ASHLYN SISKE / STEWART-HAAS RACING – DARLINGTON, SC
STEWART-HAAS RACING
Crown Royal Purple Bag Project 200
Date: May 11, 2024
Event: Crown Royal Purple Bag Project 200 (Round 11 of 33)
Series: NASCAR Xfinity Series
Location: Darlington (S.C.) Raceway (1.366-mile oval)
Format: 147 laps, broken into three stages (45 laps/45 laps/57 laps)
Race Winner: Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Stage 1 Winner: Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports (Chevrolet)
Stage 2 Winner: Justin Allgaier of JR Motorsports (Chevrolet)
SHR Race Finish:
● Cole Custer (Started 1st / Finished 3rd, Running, completed 147 of 147 laps)
● Riley Herbst (Started 9th / Finished 7th, Running, completed 147 of 147 laps)
SHR Points:
● Cole Custer (2nd with 427 points, three out of first)
● Riley Herbst (6th with 337 points, 93 out of first)
SHR Notes:
● Custer earned his sixth top-five of the season and his fifth top-five in six career NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Darlington.
● Custer has never finished outside the top-10 at Darlington in his Xfinity Series career.
● This was Custer’s fifth straight top-five at Darlington. He finished third and fourth, respectively in 2023.
● This was Custer’s ninth straight top-10. He finished second March 2 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, fifth March 9 at Phoenix Raceway, fourth March 23 at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin Texas, 10th March 30 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway, eighth April 6 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, fifth April 13 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, 10th April 20 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, and fifth April 27 at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway.
● Custer led once for 21 laps – his first laps led at Darlington.
● Herbst earned his fourth top-10 of the season and his fourth top-10 in nine career NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Darlington.
● This was Herbst’s second straight top-10 at Darlington. He finished sixth last September.
● Herbst finished ninth in Stage 1 to earn two bonus points and ninth in Stage 2 to earn two more bonus points.
Race Notes:
● Justin Allgaier won the Crown Royal Purple Bag Project 200 to score his 24th career NASCAR Xfinity Series victory, his first of the season, and his third at Darlington. His margin over second-place Austin Hill was 3.407 seconds.
● There were five caution periods for a total of 31 laps.
● Twenty-eight of the 38 drivers in the race finished on the lead lap.
● Austin Hill leaves Darlington as the championship leader with a three-point advantage over second-place Cole Custer.
Sound Bites:
“It was really tough to keep the tires under our car today. You had to really be patient the first few laps, but I’m just frustrated. We had such a fast car with a three-second lead before that competition yellow and just lost our track position on that pit stop. That happens on pit road. That’s part of it, but it’s frustrating. We’ve been so fast and just haven’t had everything go right. Our guys are doing such a great job bringing fast cars to the racetrack. Our pit stops are awesome, but we just need everything to go right because once we got back in traffic, we just didn’t adjust on it probably how we needed to. It took us until the end of the race to get it back to where we needed it to be, but I can’t thank Haas Automation and Gene Haas and everybody at SHR for bringing such fast cars. I’m just so frustrated we’re not in victory lane yet, but we’ll keep fighting.” –Cole Custer, driver of the No. 00 Haas Automation Throwback Ford Mustang Dark Horse
“At the end of the day, I just don’t think our car was the best it could have been. We were probably about a seventh-place race car and ended up seventh. It’s just frustrating when you can’t get your car to drive how you want it to. It just felt flat, tight, bound up, but we’ll move to one of my favorite tracks at Charlotte.” –Riley Herbst, driver of the No. 98 Terrible Herbst Ford Mustang Dark Horse
Next Up:
The next event on the NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule is the BetMGM 300 on Saturday, May 25 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway. The race begins at 1 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by FOX and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.