MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Feb. 13, 2024) – At this point in 2023, Mardy Lindley and Sam Mayer had yet to embark on a full season together in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. They had history, a successful one at that, but not at this level.
One year later, the veteran crew chief and his precocious driver have to figure out how to top a year in which they won four races and finished a strong third in the championship after a thrilling performance in the second half of the season.
Lindley and Mayer will embark this year with a robust sponsor lineup which includes new partners in Carolina Carports and Tire Pros and essentially the same team behind them. The expectation is to replicate—and surpass—their 2023 season performance.
The team behind the duo will once again consist of lead engineer Aedan McHugh, second engineer/tire specialist Josh Lewis, car chief Pat Martin and front-end mechanic James Craig, with new addition Kyle Stevens as the underneath mechanic in place of Gregg Buchanan. Stevens was with Lindley and Mayer when they teamed up to dominate the ARCA Menards Series a few years ago, and his addition makes him the third member of that team to come to JRM with Lindley. Kevin Hamlin will once again be the eyes in sky for Mayer as spotter.
The 2023 season was, for Lindley, a series of up-and-down moments that ended decidedly in favor of the upside, and that means 2024 will be focused on building from there.
“I felt like the first part of last year had its ups and downs, hit or miss,” he said. “The second half started with some of that same hit-and-miss, but there was a lot more consistency. The wins started coming and we functioned better as a group from pit road to all of us, Sam and everyone. This year, we need to keep that same momentum going, build on it and improve from there.”
The turnaround for Mayer came in fits and starts, Lindley said. When he won at Road America—his home track—that was when the switch flipped.
“The Nashville race stuck out to me, the Pocono race stuck out, he finished second there,” Lindley said. “But you have to go back to the first win at Road America. That win was where he knew he could do it, he just had to apply himself. After that, we built some consistency with the team, the pit crew seemed to find another gear. It fired the guys up, and winning cures a lot of things.”
Four wins—at Road America, Watkins Glen, the Roval at Charlotte and Homestead-Miami Speedway, all in the final 14 races of the season—led to a top-three championship finish. The key for 2024 is to even out that performance across all 33 events.
“Maintaining (the finishes) would be OK, but being more consistent is the focus, shoring up some of the issues we had in 2023 and putting all that behind us,” Lindley said. “We just need to build consistency, have no mechanical failures. No hiccups would be a great start for 2024.”
Mayer’s switch-flipping performance over the last segment of the 2023 season echoes his tenure in the ARCA Menards Series with Lindley as his crew chief.
“I’ve been in a similar situation with Sam when he was in the ARCA Series,” Lindley remembered. “He was young. The first year, 2019, he won some races, and he started figuring it out. The next season, he just lit it up. I was thinking, ‘is it age, is it maturity?’ Looking back at it now, it’s just confidence.
“He had confidence, walking around the garage, feeling more accepted by his peers. He feels like his competitors know he can win, and that he might have some more respect on the race track after last year.”
That said, maintaining that level of performance over 33 races is not an easy task, Lindley remarked.
“The expectations of knowing you won four races and made it to the Championship 4…it’s hard to get back,” the veteran crew chief opined. “It’s harder to make the Championship 4 than it is to win a race in my opinion, but here at JRM it doesn’t appear that way because we have had so many opportunities the last couple of years.”
Case in point, he said, is the 2023 series champion, Cole Custer. Both Custer and Mayer made the final race with Hail Mary-type finishes at Martinsville Speedway in the deciding race.
“The 00 (Custer), one of the best cars all year, barely got into the Championship 4 on a miracle at Martinsville,” he said. “There were a lot of cracks and holes in our season that I think we can build on. We were out of it (the Championship 4) twice, and Sam hit a grand slam twice to get us back in it. That’s the talent that he has. He has a touch of success by winning those races, and it’s become infectious for him.”
The young driver has grown in many ways since his rookie season.
“I see improvement in him from this time last year,” Lindley said. “He’s working harder, seems to have more focus. That comes with maturity and finally winning. A lot of people have to work at it to be as good as he is, and he has a lot of natural talent. When he applies himself and he’s locked in, he’s as good as anyone on the track.”
While there are no major technical changes from 2023 to 2024—mostly on the aero side—the switch to nine-gallon gas cans for pit stops could be a hiccup waiting to happen in the early races of the season, Lindley remarked.
“There’re just a few aero changes, not much. It’ll make the cars drive a little better and help everybody. The gas can change is definitely going to change the pit stops. It throws another strategy issue in. Do you wait on gas or try to go on tires? You’re going to be waiting on fuel because it’s going to take two cans most stops, so do you take off or try to get track position? If you do that, you gain track position but you’re going to be short on fuel. It’s a little bit of strategy that will play into it.
“The cans don’t flow as fast because they don’t have a lot of volume. The second stage, we could get by with just one can, and the third stage was always a one-can stop and that’s when you’re looking for track position and everyone has worked on their cars. At the start of the third stage, that’s when it gets tough because everyone has made their cars better and track position means a lot at that point.”
In terms of consistency, Lindley says that maximizing points in each race is going to be the focal point of the season.
“You have to start counting points from lap one,” he said. “Aedan (McHugh) does a little spread sheet of what it takes to win the regular-season championship, and it takes 45-47 points a race. We look at this and where we’re at, and there are some holes. In one stretch last year, we got seven points in three races. That’s hard to do. Then we got 56 in one race. Sixty points is the max. It’s really valuable to collect these bonus points. Stage points matter, because it counts toward the playoffs if you make it. You have to start at Daytona, because you can’t always hit the grand slam when you need it.”
The first 32 races set the field for the winner-take-all finale, and that’s a whole different mentality, Lindley said. Likewise, the return of AJ Allmendinger and the impending arrival of last year’s darling, Shane von Gisbergen, as well as the usual influx of Cup Series drop-in drivers, will have an effect on how the NXS championship will play out.
“The championship is one race,” Lindley said. “If you miss the setup or have a hiccup on pit road it sets you back, it makes it difficult. AJ Allmendinger is coming back full-time, and a lot of our success last year was on road courses. SVG is here now. You’ll have Ty Gibbs in some of the races. We have a field stacked 15 deep this year. Our team cars are going to be better this year with the lineup we have, the addition of Phillip (Bell) and Adam (Wall) can only help me and Jim (Pohlman) as the season goes along.”
At the end of the day, Lindley said the season boils down to focus, from him and his team and especially the driver.
“When he (Mayer) applies himself and wins one of these races, he’s going to lock in,” Lindley said. “He’s a next-level driver in my opinion when he is focused and locked in on what he’s supposed to be doing. We just can’t mess it up for him.”