SAM MAYER CELEBRATES IOWA XFINITY WIN BUT ALSO EXPLAINS WHAT 'MAKES ME SO MAD'
NEWTON, Iowa — Runner-up Riley Herbst ran into winner Sam Mayer’s car after Saturday’s Xfinity race at Iowa Speedway but when Mayer explained what “makes me so mad,” he wasn’t referencing that contact.
Mayer, who turns 21 on June 26, earned his second victory of the season and his sixth in 99 career Xfinity starts.
While NASCAR’s Silly Season has focused on where the Stewart-Haas Racing drivers could go or where Craftsman Truck Series driver Corey Heim could be headed, Mayer’s name rarely is mentioned among the young prospects for potential Cup rides.
Asked about that after the race, Mayer said: “Yeah, it kind of pisses me off, to be honest with you. I feel like we’ve proved ourselves a lot more. Like I’m dead serious. It makes me so mad that my name isn’t in more hats for race teams. So hopefully today kind of put my name in a couple of them. We’re working really hard. I want to go Sunday racing, obviously, one day. How soon? I don’t know.
"Me, (Herbst), all those guys, there are so many people in the top five and top 10 that have something to prove. If you can be top dog in those guys, I feel like you deserve it."
Mayer’s win was his seventh top-four finish in the last nine races. His Iowa victory marked his first victory on a short track. His other wins had come at road courses (Road America, Watkins Glen and Charlotte Roval) and 1.5-mile tracks (Homestead and Texas).
As for what happened after the race? Herbst ran into Mayer’s car and flattened Mayer's left rear tire.
“I like racing Sam, but stage one or two he just absolutely brooms me,” Herbst told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns after the race. “We were racing clean for fourth and takes us back to 10th and then doors me down the back straightaway before the green-white-checker. It’s just frustrating the way he wants to do that.”
Herbst later said: “There’s no issue. I was just frustrated by the way … he slid me, I think it was stage one or two and he wasn’t clear. He drove both of us up to the fence in Turns 1 and 2. … At the end, it was fair racing on the green-white-checkered. It was fun. I enjoy racing Sam, but I was frustrated early in the race.”
Said Mayer of the contact after the race from Herbst: "I knew immediately it was either ... 'I hate you' or 'Congratulations.' I think that we know the answer to that unfortunately. I feel really bad. Obviously I got into him earlier.
"It was so top dominant there at the end. We were all fighting for literally four feet of asphalt around the whole race track. Just did all I could to get there and just overstepped it a little bit."