Sammy Smith is Ready to Silence the Doubters in the Xfinity Playoffs
Don’t let the numbers fool you. If you’re just looking at the stat sheet for Sammy Smith’s regular season, you might be tempted to write him off. An average season, you might say. But that’s just paper. Racing isn’t done on paper. It’s done on the asphalt, and Sammy Smith and his No. 8 JR Motorsports team believe they’re a legitimate threat for the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship. Anyone who thinks otherwise just hasn’t been paying attention. Smith, who recently confirmed he’s sticking with JR Motorsports for a third year in 2026, wrapped up the regular season 10th in points. It’s a respectable spot, sure, but the lowest of the four JRM drivers.
His playoff ticket was officially punched back in April at Rockingham Speedway, where he was awarded the win after Jesse Love’s disqualification. But a win is a win, and it got him into the dance.“It’s been up and down; we haven’t been as consistent as we need to be,” Smith admitted, speaking to NASCAR.com. It’s an honest take from a driver who knows what his team is capable of. “We’ve learned a lot about each other as a team. We’ve improved and made mistakes as a team as well. I feel like we’re in a really good place going into the playoffs.”
The Sammy Smith Story: More Than Just Numbers
If you’ve been watching the races, you know speed has never been the problem for the No. 8 car. It’s been the little things, the execution, that have held them back. A post-race inspection failure at Charlotte cost them a chunk of valuable points. But even with those setbacks, the fourth-year driver is on pace to set new personal records for top-10 finishes and average finish. The potential is there, simmering just below the surface.
There was also that tangle with Taylor Gray at Martinsville in the spring. A last-lap battle for the win that went sideways. It was a tough lesson, one that Smith feels forced him to grow up fast, both as a driver and a person.“I think it made me grow better as a driver and as a person,” Smith said, looking back on the incident. “In the moment, I thought it was the best thing to do to try and win the race. Obviously, after the fact, I didn’t win the race, and it wasn’t the best thing to do.”
That moment sparked a change. Smith has worked hard to shed that aggressive image, focusing on clean, hard racing. He’s learned to tune out the chatter from the stands and social media. The only voices that matter are the ones in his helmet and the experienced counsel from guys like his boss, Dale Earnhardt Jr.“We told him, everyone thinks [you’re] a punk, you’re giving them a good reason to think that, don’t give them the reason,” Earnhardt shared on a recent episode of the “Dale Jr Download.” “Go out there and figure it out… He’s worked hard to be solid, and he has. I’ve seen him get better as a driver.”
Why Sammy Smith is a True Playoff Contender
With the points reset for the playoffs, Smith isn’t starting from the bottom. He jumps up to the sixth seed, holding a slim four-point cushion above the cutline as the Round of 12 kicks off at Bristol. And a look at the playoff schedule should make the other 11 drivers nervous. The tracks line up perfectly for Smith, who already has wins at Phoenix in 2023 and Talladega in 2024 on his resume.“It’s the best place that I’ve been in probably the past few years,” Smith said about his team’s mindset.
“We have a stronger team. We’ve had a lot more speed this year than we had last year. The races that are in the playoffs suit our style, my style, and what I like. I think that’s to our advantage.”This isn’t his first rodeo. Smith has shown he can come alive when the pressure is on. His Talladega win last year was a walk-off, a must-win situation to advance to the Round of 8. In 2023, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, he dominated at Martinsville in the penultimate race, leading 147 laps from the pole before late-race chaos snatched the win away.
He knows what it takes to run up front when it counts. The team, led by crew chief Phillip Bell, isn’t overthinking it. “You have to take it one stage at a time,” Bell said. “You can’t overthink it. You have to take it one race at a time.”Bell isn’t sweating any of the tracks in the first two rounds. He sees a path forward. “Last year, we struggled pretty bad at Bristol, and we hit on something in the spring with Sammy and fought for a win there,” Bell noted. “Kansas, JRM always runs well there… Round of 8: Vegas, Talladega, Martinsville, that’s three tracks that you go there and expect to win.”
Ambition for Bristol
Yes, Smith has only five top-five finishes this season. Yes, he’s only led 62 laps. On paper, he’s a sleeper. But don’t you dare call him that to his face, or to anyone on the No. 8 crew. They know what they’re capable of.“The people that are around me and the team know what we’re capable of,” Smith stated with confidence. “We expect to be in the final four… I think we can prove a lot of people wrong and prove to ourselves that we can do it.”
Bell’s ambition is even higher. “The expectation is to win the championship,” he declared. “Anything less than that is failure.”That’s the kind of fire you want to see. This isn’t a team just happy to be here. This is a team with a chip on its shoulder, ready to prove that the regular season was just the warm-up act. The real show is about to begin.
