By Luis Torres, Staff Writer/Photographer
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It may bear the Haas name, but it’s a whole different Haas organization.
In their first race in the post-Stewart-Haas Racing Era, the Haas Factory Team duo of Sam Mayer and Sheldon Creed scored top-fives in their team debut in Saturday’s United Rentals 300 at Daytona International Speedway.
Mayer ended up leading the team with a runner-up finish, but knows that a chance of Daytona glory slipped away from him.
On the final restart, Jesse Love had made a bold move to slice his way in the lead coming to the white flag.
However, behind them was when the usual Daytona chaos happened that collected several drivers. For Mayer, the issue was the caution came out after taking the white flag, so any last chance of dethroning Jesse Love was cut short.
As Love celebrated in victory with tremendous enthusiasm, Mayer will have to look at the overtime restart and see what kept him from defending his lead.
In the meantime, he couldn’t be prouder of his No. 41 HFT squad as they embark on a new era for Gene Haas’ latest venture in NASCAR.
“I’m definitely learning as we go, but huge props to this team,” said Mayer after finishing second.
“This Audibel Ford Mustang was really, really fast today. I am super proud to be up at the front with these guys, especially with a new team like this. They worked really hard this offseason to make cars as fast as Xfinity Mobile, but so far, so good.”
Like Mayer, Creed also was snakebitten by Love’s daring maneuvers to take the race lead before a series of multi-car crashes sent the 300-mile race into overtime.
Creed’s chance of finally breaking through in the Xfinity Series will yet again have to wait another race, but rather than a 14th career runner-up result, it was a third at Daytona.
Creed attested that Richard Childress Racing, who’ve now won the last four straight Xfinity opener races at Daytona, have a knack of rebounding to the front under any circumstances. Much more when comparing Love’s No. 2 Chevrolet to Creed’s No. 00 Ford.
“Getting control of the race, obviously. I mean, I tried,” said Creed. “I tried to go by the 2 there with 15, 20 to go and got by him once and then got next to him another time and just didn’t quite have the help out back that I needed.
“But the RCR car was just really fast and (Jesse) could rebound really quickly like as I’d go by him, he could rebound and go right back by me where it took me a couple laps to kind of think it out.
“Overall, I would just go try to be aggressive and keep myself up front, and I thought we did all that well. So just appreciative of everyone at Haas Factory team and Friends of Jaclyn. A really fast Ford Mustang Dark Horse tonight.”
From one superspeedway to the next, the Xfinity Series will make the quick travel to Hampton, Georgia, home of the Atlanta Motor Speedway for more superspeedway action. The Haas Factory Team will look to conquer Richard Childress Racing next Saturday at 5:00 p.m. ET on CW.
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