There is a certain safety in numbers.
JR Motorsports enters the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs with half the field under its banner and a head of steam with four races remaining in the season.
The team has won four races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, including the spring race this year (Justin Allgaier). Josh Berry won there twice for JRM, in 2021 and 2022, and Mark Martin earned the first NXS win for JRM there on March 1, 2008.
The team has scored 49 of its now-105 victories on intermediate tracks (1-2 miles in length), five of them coming this season at Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami, Rockingham, Texas, Nashville and World Wide Technology Raceway.
With the reset of the Playoff points, JR Motorsports holds the top two spots with Connor Zilisch atop the board, 33 points ahead of Allgaier in second. Sammy Smith (-62) is sixth in the order, with Carson Kvapil four points behind in seventh.
Smith trails the cutoff for the Championship 4 by just seven points with three races to go, and Kvapil is 11 points out entering this weekend’s round opener.
The two remaining races of the Round of 8 take place on Oct. 18 at Talladega Superspeedway and Oct. 25 at Martinsville Speedway.
At Talladega, JRM has won three times (Regan Smith in 2013, Elliott Sadler in 2016 and Sammy Smith last season). Earlier this season, Allgaier led the way in fourth, with Kvapil 17th in his first start there. Zilisch was running in the lead near the end when he was nudged out of the draft and into a spin that sent him headlong into the inside barrier and a 27th-place finish. He sustained a back injury that forced him to miss the following race at Texas (in which super-sub Kyle Larson drove to victory in his place). Smith finished 31st after mechanical problems sidelined him.
The penultimate race of the Round of 8 is at Martinsville, which has been a good track for JRM in the Playoffs. All three of the team’s wins there have come in the past four seasons, with Josh Berry earning his maiden NXS win there in 2021. Noah Gragson won in spectacular fashion there later in the season to punch his ticket to the Championship 4. Allgaier won in 2023 in another wild finish, overcoming a last-lap pileup in Turns 3 and 4 to win the race and a berth in the final race the following week.