By the numbers, Sammy Smith had an average regular season. But he doesn’t think that should sway you from believing that the No. 8 team is not a realistic threat for the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship.
Smith — who will return to JR Motorsports for a third year in 2026 — ended the regular season 10th in points, the lowest of the four full-time JRM entries. His guaranteed spot in the postseason came from an awarded victory after Jesse Love was disqualified at Rockingham Speedway in mid-April.
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“It’s been up and down; we haven’t been as consistent as we need to be,” Smith told NASCAR.com. “We’ve learned a lot about each other as a team. We’ve improved and made mistakes as a team as well. I feel like we’re in a really good place going into the playoffs.”
Speed hasn’t been an issue. To Smith, it was a lack of execution and failing post-race inspection at Charlotte Motor Speedway that cost the No. 8 bunch valuable points. The fourth-year driver is still on track to set new personal bests in top 10s and average finishes.
After tangling with Taylor Gray on the final lap at Martinsville Speedway in the spring, Smith felt he needed to reshape his image. He’s worked tirelessly to avoid any additional controversy, though it hasn’t hampered his performance.
“I think it made me grow better as a driver and as a person,” Smith said, reflecting on Martinsville. “In the moment, I thought it was the best thing to do to try and win the race. Obviously, after the fact, I didn’t win the race, and it wasn’t the best thing to do.”
Smith shies away from listening to outside noise. Unless he’s getting critiqued by NASCAR Hall of Famer/JRM co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. or someone with senior experience, he handles himself accordingly.
“We told him, everyone thinks [you’re] a punk, you’re giving them a good reason to think that, don’t give them the reason,” Earnhardt said on the Sept. 2 edition of the “Dale Jr Download.” “Go out there and figure it out. Go out there and rebuild, gain back your reputation. He’s worked hard to be solid, and he has. I’ve seen him get better as a driver.”
With the points reset, Smith jumped to the sixth seed on the playoff grid, four points above the cutline entering Friday’s Round of 12 opener at Bristol Motor Speedway (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The playoff venues line up well for the No. 8 team, with past victories at Phoenix Raceway (2023) and Talladega Superspeedway (2024).
“It’s the best place that I’ve been in probably the past few years,” Smith said of entering the playoffs. “We have a stronger team. We’ve had a lot more speed this year than we had last year. The races that are in the playoffs suit our style, my style and what I like. I think that’s to our advantage.”
Smith has come up clutch in the playoffs in the last two years. His Talladega victory came in Hail Mary fashion; his only path to the Round of 8 in 2024 was by winning. As pilot of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, he was in position to win the penultimate race of the 2023 season at Martinsville, leading a career-high 147 laps from the pole until the race went haywire in the waning laps.
“It’s that mindset of being back on an even playing ground,” Smith said. “Momentum is a big thing in racing, and once you get it and are on it, you can keep riding that.”
The opening round in 2025 could be the most challenging round for Smith. He has a pair of top-10 finishes in four Bristol starts, including a fourth-place effort in the spring. He has an average finish of 21.7 in three attempts at Kansas Speedway. With an average finish of 10.5 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, he’s also respectable at the 17-turn layout.
The mindset, according to the No. 8 team, will be a straightforward one.
“You have to take it one stage at a time,” Phillip Bell, crew chief of No. 8 Chevy, said. “You can’t overthink it. You have to take it one race at a time.”
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According to Bell, no tracks in the opening two rounds of the playoffs scare the No. 8 team. Smith has been mediocre through five starts at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but he is a threat on superspeedways and is normally in the mix at Martinsville.
“I don’t want to look too far out, but there’s not a track in the Round of 12 or Round of 8 that is worrying me,” Bell said. “Last year, we struggled pretty bad at Bristol, and we hit on something in the spring with Sammy and fought for a win there and was solid top five all day. Kansas, JRM always runs well there. Roval, we’ve made gains on it. Round of 8: Vegas, Talladega, Martinsville, that’s three tracks that you go there and expect to win.”
Given Smith has only five top fives (tied for the second fewest among all playoff drivers) and led 62 laps this season (second fewest), he could be considered a sleeper. Just don’t tell that to the No. 8 crew.
“The people that are around me and the team know what we’re capable of,” Smith said. “We expect to be in the final four. I’m sure to a lot of people on paper, it probably looks like we’re not very good as a team and we struggle, but I think we can prove a lot of people wrong and prove to ourselves that we can do it.”
Bell’s goals are loftier, expecting to hoist the title come the championship race at Phoenix.
“The expectation is to win the championship,” Bell said. “The expectation is to be in the final four, and he’s won at Phoenix before. Anything less than that is failure.”
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