By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
In the closing laps at Richmond Raceway, it appeared that Matt Tifft was going to etch his name into the list of 2018 winners in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
With 14 laps remaining, Tifft came down the pit lane in the top-five but came off of pit lane with the race lead. Tifft praised his pit crew for their efforts throughout the night to put them in contention for the win.
“They’ve been killing it the last few weeks. They have gotten lots of spots. They are doing one hell of a job there. They are making up spots for us,” Tifft stated post-race.
“It makes it a little bit easier with that. It’s the playoffs, you have to be mistake-free. Obviously, we had the freak thing happen with the left front, but their fast stops got us back in contention. We had a fast car that got us back there.”
For the last couple of months, the No. 2 team at Richard Childress Racing has been flying under the radar. Tifft has embraced that darkhorse figure during the Playoffs.
Tifft knows that the cars at Richard Childress Racing have good speed, but they need to capitalize on having long-run speed throughout the entire weekend. He believes they could compete with Joe Gibbs Racing and JR Motorsports.
“We have good speed. Today, we both showed that we had the really good long-run speed. We have to be able to that every single part of the weekend,” he said. “There are little things that we need to step up on, but we will go back to the shop and work on them. There is no reason we can’t go out and compete with those guys.”
With his fifth-place finish, Tifft hopes to carry the momentum from Richmond and his finishes at recent road courses into next weekend on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course.
“We just need to be able to do that. It is going to be crazy one way or the other. I think if we can stay in the top three there, it is going to make our day a lot easier. That is easier said than done.”
Going into Charlotte, Tifft finds himself sixth in the points standings.