“We Kinda S*cked” – Tony Stewart’s Xfinity Champion Tells the Truth Behind His Championship Season

Another race weekend has flown by and once again it is time for analysts and insiders to take up their mics. Only this time, they will be joined by the 2023 NASCAR champions. Post the Championship 4 races of NASCAR’s top three tiers in Phoenix, a fresh set of champions have been making rounds in the media to look back at their respective seasons. With newer insights and underdog stories filling up the stands, this year’s Xfinity Series triumphant Cole Custer has taken his seat too.

Appearing on DirtyMo Media’s Door Bumper Clear podcast, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver surprisingly was very frank about the terrible season that they had going on before they won the championship.

Cole Custer voices out frank opinion about his team’s bad season despite becoming champion

On top of his many achievements in NASCAR, 25-year-old Cole Custer will be adding his Xfinity Champion title. Custer spent the last 3 years in the Cup Series driving for Tony Stewart‘s team. In 2023, he was asked to move to Xfinity. While many viewed it as a demotion, Custer has proven that he still deserves his Cup Series ride. This year he piloted the #00 car for SHR in his journey to the top. Over the season, he secured 14 top 5s and 3 victories, including the one in Championship 4.

Regardless of the splendid run, Custer isn’t very pleased with the stats. Speaking to the hosts of the podcast, he answered a question from veteran spotter Brett Griffin about the ease of getting wins this year and said, “We had a really good shot to win Fontana but we had a tire go down. Other than that, we kinda s*cked. We ran 12th three weeks in a row and I was like, ‘Oh, god what are we doing?’ We had to really communicate with each other about what we needed to do to make ourselves better and truly fix our problems.”

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During the season, Custer and his team put out one of the most consistent runs in the show. They piled up 11 consecutive top-10 finishes from April to July that kept them in the run for the championship. But since then, a dry run lurched onto their backs, until Phoenix. Continuing to detail his difficulty in getting maximum points on the scoreboard, he provided the reason for it.

The Stewart-Haas Racing champion shares the reasons for his difficulty in winning races

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Continuing on his answer, Cole Custer said, “There are 12 cars in the Xfinity Series right now that could legitimately win. Before it was more like 5 or 6 cars. So I felt like, the competition level in the Xfinity Series was pretty solid. Everyone was pretty competitive. If you were off your game, you were gonna run 12th.” Despite the difficulty that could have very well put him out of the Championship 4, the driver was glad that it turned out to be so.

Mentioning that he wouldn’t have got the chance to learn as much as he did and work with his team as much, he was very pleased with the outcome of the harder route. Custer’s Championship is Stewart-Haas Racing’s first since their title with the retired icon Kevin Harvick. The achievement is of great magnitude without question. When Ryan Preece was given Custer’s Cup Series car, he could have expressed his disgruntlement and very easily faded off into a lackluster season. But what he did was win the Championship and prove his worth to Tony Stewart and Gene Haas.

For the top man though, moving Custer a step back was a pre-planned move. After the finale, Stewart was reported by Autoweek as saying, “It was a calculated decision to move him back, and it was for him to gain confidence.” Continuing on when and how the champion will get his Cup car back, Stewart said, “He’s doing the work. He’s been a great leader at the shop with these guys. I have the utmost confidence that he will be back in a Cup car at some point.”

Read More: “Not Sad at All” – Tony Stewart’s Retiring Driver Reflects on 12-Year Long Journey in NASCAR