By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Daniel Hemric was just off Saturday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway. And with a championship and a first-career win on the line, there was plenty of disappointment to go around.
Ending his second full-time Xfinity season with Richard Childress Racing, Hemric was off on speed in his No. 21 Chevrolet, missing out on both the title and race win in the Ford EcoBoost 300.
“We went out swinging, that’s all you can do,” Hemric said. “We didn’t lay over. I’m glad we made it the whole race this year but it wasn’t meant to be.”
Scoring 16 top-five finishes in 2018, Hemric had the speed nearly all year in his sophomore season. However, Homestead showed the No. 21 lack the pace of the three championship contenders. Hemric jumped to finish fourth after Christopher Bell cut a tire late.
“We tried to pit at the same time as the No. 00 and hoping a caution would come out in that sequence,” he said. “We made our bed, we were giving away two or three seconds a lap. We needed to make up track position someway, somehow. We just gave up more through that sequence.”
Hemric stood out during the race, running the bottom lane for the majority of the 200-lap event. While the outside lane brought Tyler Reddick to Victory Lane and the championship, Hemric’s Chevy could only run the bottom.
“I didn’t try too much up there, I gave up too much lap time too quick,” he said. “My bail was made on the bottom. As the top becomes a thing, you just have to be patient around the bottom. I was hoping a caution would come out to give us a shot but it didn’t.”
With only the two stage breaks halting the race, Hemric knew long runs were his strong suit for the night. However, it was raw speed that was the team’s weak point against Cole Custer, Reddick and John Hunter Nemechek.
“Early on, we thought the short runs were our deficit,” he said. “We lost track position early but the car was so good on the long run that we could battle back and be OK. We lost the ability to make hay on those guys when they moved up top.”
With champion Reddick moving to RCR in 2019 in the Xfinity Series, Hemric will drive the No. 31 Cup car for RCR in 2019, again becoming teammates with the 22-year-old. They paired at Brad Keselowski Racing in the Truck Series in 2016.
“It’s a huge deal,” he said. “Tyler has done a great job, we saw him grow a lot as a racecar driver the last three or four months.”