Story By: SAM MAHONEY / TOYOTA RACING – SONOMA, CA – Sheldon Creed scored a second-place result in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Sonoma Raceway. Creed made his way through the top-five late in the race in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 GR Supra to earn the runner-up result, marking his fifth top-five finish of the season. The California-native, who is searching for his first Xfinity Series victory, earned his ninth career second-place finish in the series.
Ty Gibbs ran in the top two for much of the race, leading 26 laps and winning stage two, before being involved in an on-track incident on lap 49 that collected a number of cars, including Gibbs’ Toyota GR Supra. The damage suffered ended Gibbs’ day early.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Xfinity Series
Sonoma Raceway
Race 14 of 33 – 157.21 miles, 79 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Shane Van Gisbergen*
2nd, SHELDON CREED
3rd, Sam Mayer*
4th, Austin Green*
5th, Austin Hill
7th, CHANDLER SMITH
8th, JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK
15th, ED JONES
35th, TY GIBBS
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
SHELDON CREED, No. 18 MRC Construction Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 2nd
Early unscheduled pit stop, but you were able to battle back to finish second. Can you talk about your race?
“I don’t even know how many second places that is – number nine or something? I don’t know – I guess I just had a silly set of tires that blistered – had an unscheduled stop there and had really good adjustments. I knew we were really good the second half of stage two, and stage three after that first caution came out. Just knew I had a really fast car after the first few laps. I want to thank everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota – I had a really fast MRC Construction Toyota GR Supra. I really want to say thank you to MRC Construction for coming on board this weekend, Mike Avila (owner) and his family – thank you guys. I don’t know – I don’t want to say that we need more laps, because I know the 97 (Shane van Gisbergen) probably wasn’t going his hardest at the end, but I just wish maybe I could have started on the front row with him and wasn’t part of the chaos there. I wheel-hopped into the 16 (A.J. Allmendinger) – so I know an apology doesn’t do much, but that is not what you want to do – wheel hop into your competitors and take them out and ruin their day. We will move on to Iowa next week and keep trucking along.”
CHANDLER SMITH, No. 81 QuickTie Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
How were you able to come back and finish seventh with so much damage to your car?
“To be honest with you, this No. 81 QuickTie Products Toyota GR Supra is just bad fast. It was bad fast, especially there at the very end. Got that damage after that wreck when we went three wide, that put us behind the eight ball. Then got wrecked right after I went to the back there and that really put us behind the eight ball, but that caution kind of saved us and we were able to march forward pretty quickly. I can’t say enough about everybody on this group today. We had adversity right from the get-go with our tachometer. It somehow got goofed up and our pit road lights weren’t right. With everything that happened on the track today, we were still able to have a decent stage points day and a decent finish and a really solid car even though it was torn up. Super proud of everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing and looking forward to Iowa.”
TY GIBBS, No. 19 Starkey/Soundgear Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 35th
How frustrated are you to be out of the race early after how fast your car was in today’s race?
“It’s definitely frustrating for sure. I don’t really know what happened. I haven’t really seen a good replay. I know somebody spun out and everybody just booked it and held it wide open. We caught up in that and got hit like six or seven times after that. It’s just unfortunate, but we had a great car. I feel like I learned a lot. Thank you to Starkey and Soundgear and the Sawalich family for letting me run this race, and Toyota and Monster Energy. Definitely not the most ideal way to end it, but I feel like we were really solid and wish we could stay out there and had a shot to win, but that’s just the way it goes.”