Sammy Smith reacts to overtime move by Jesse Love for the win at Rockingham

What a damn finish. It is rare an overtime race delivers like this one did. Sammy Smith had his thoughts on the finish. Bringing the No. 8 car home P2 behind Jesse Love, was the NASCAR Xfinity Series driver upset about how things ended at Rockingham?

Jesse Love lined up on the inside behind Sammy Smith at the end of the Xfinity race tonight. From there, he nudged Smith up and in front of Taylor Gray. It was an incredibly delicate move, as far as stock car racing goes, to move Smith up and not wreck the field.

We all know what Smith did at Martinsville. Hell, it looked like a Gray vs. Smith rematch for a moment. This is what the JR Motorsports driver had to say after the finish.

“Yeah it was, you know, that was good, hard racing right there,” Sammy Smith said. “I ran in [hard] that first restart when I got the lead. So, you know, congrats to Jesse, and we brought a really fast car today. … Our car was as fast as Xfinity. We just, man, I – we did a good job saving fuel on that long green flag run to kind of get us in position to be there at the end, and we had a good car all day. Just thanks to everybody. All you can ask for is a good spot like that to be in for a shot at the end and we did. So, we’ll move on to Talladega.”

Good news, Sammy walks away with the Dash 4 Cash victory, and he’s not the main story of the race because of a late mishap! That means he gets to take home the $100,000 check. That will be a little less than $100,000 thanks to that Martinsville fine from a few weeks ago.

“Yeah, I guess I can pay my fine back. So, that’s a little bit exciting. But yeah, we’ll keep digging. Really happy with the progress we’ve made and we’ll keep digging,” Smith concluded.

So, it’s a disappointing result. However, this is what Sammy Smith needs to be doing. He has four straight top-10 finishes. In fact, since his P21 finish at Homestead, he has only improved his finishing position each week after that. P10 at Martinsville, P9 at Darlington, and P4 and P2 in the last two weeks at Bristol and Rockingham.

He needs to keep digging, like he said, and earning these great finishes. When you run up front consistently like he has been, the wins start to come eventually.