Cole Custer misses out on early Championship 4 bid, leaves Miami with healthy point lead

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — With 12 laps to go, Cole Custer was able to sniff a potential early title bid and lock into the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway until the No. 21 Austin Hill rocketed past the No. 00 Ford on the low line, delivering a knockout punch to the defending NASCAR Xfinity Series champion.

Custer and Hill established themselves as frontrunners early in the race. The two battled for the top spot in the closing lap of the opening stage and again separated themselves from the pack for the majority of Stage 2. Over the 200-lap event, Custer and Hill exchanged the lead six times.

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Custer looked poised to take the checkered flag after shooting from third to first on Lap 98 and sailed to almost a five-second lead before the final round of green-flag stops. But eventually, Custer’s long-run speed gave out in the end and he couldn’t keep up with Hill in final laps as the No. 21 soared to a 3.045-second margin of victory, leaving Custer scratching his head and wondering what went wrong as smoke from the No. 21’s burnout on the frontstretch engulfed pit road.

“Just seem to get loose,” Custer said in reference to what he was lacking in the long runs. “You know on the second to last run, I didn’t feel like we were that bad, but the No. 21 got a lot better. So was a little confused by that, but overall, really solid day. I wish we got the win but it is what it is. [Hill] was just lights out today.”

The No. 21 Richard Childress Racing team was lights out. Sweeping the stages, leading a race-high 82 laps and winning the battle off of pit road during both stage breaks. Interestingly enough, Hill didn’t even need to ride the high line close to the wall — which is typically the preferred line at Homestead — and managed to find the necessary speed running the bottom to be in Victory Lane and join AJ Allmendinger as the only two contenders locked into the finale at Phoenix Raceway.

“They were just really, really good on the long run,” Custer added about Hill. “The second to last run, they really fell off for whatever reason, and they seemed to pick up a lot of speed that second to last time. So I don’t know, we got kind of free on the long run, but definitely a little frustrating.”

Each time Custer looked to have Hill on the ropes and pinned down, especially when beating Hill on restarts, the No. 21 would battle back.

“I think the track kind of took some transitions you know,” Jonathan Toney, crew chief for the No. 00 Ford said. “So, we kind of fought back and forth and I think the car got better at the end. But the No. 21 was fast from the drop of the green flag and they done a job.”

Custer’s runner-up finish marked his fourth top-two finish in the last five Homestead races and while a South Beach celebration would’ve been nice for the Stewart-Haas Racing team, a healthy 28-point gap will have to suffice heading into the penultimate race at Martinsville Speedway next Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

“I wish it was about a 128 [point lead],” Toney said. “Cole gets around [Martinsville] there, so if we can give him what he needs, we can take care of business there.”

In three Xfinity starts at Martinsville, Custer has one finish outside of the top 10. In the spring event, Custer led 27 laps en route to a eighth-place finish.

“We have a good team and we’ve had good runs at Martinsville, so I’m looking forward to it. I think we should be able to take the fight,” Custer said. “We got to bring everything we got, because you never know who’s going to win.”