Sieg strong again on speedways but still winless
LAS VEGAS — A pair of snake-eyed restarts kept Ryan Sieg from turning speedway strength into a Las Vegas jackpot Saturday in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Sieg finished sixth and third in the stages and was third when the team executed a strategy that put him on tires that were a few laps fresher for the run to the checkers.
With 31 laps to go, Sieg passed Justin Allgaier for second and began running down A.J. Allmendinger when a caution flew for his brother, Kyle, spinning on the frontstretch.
That spin set up the first in a pair of challenging restarts.
The first restart, with 26 laps to go, didn’t keep Ryan Sieg down for long. He lost second to Chandler Smith but passed him back and passed Allmendinger for the lead by a bumper at the line with eight laps to go.
Then, going into turn one, Sieg slid sideways and lost ground to Allmendinger. However, Sieg was too good and ran Allmendinger down with six laps to go.
Unfortunately for Sieg, Sammy Smith slowed on the track and drew another caution.
Enter the second challenging restart with three laps to go and Sieg spun his tires again. In the end, he fell to Allmendinger’s by a 0.156-second loss Saturday in the Ambetter Health 302 at Las Vegas.
“I changed my line a little bit. I knew once I got to him, I could get him a little loose. Just didn’t need that late caution,” Sieg said.
Sieg now has two second-place finishes this season. His other second-place finish was a 0.002-second loss to Sam Mayer at Texas Motor Speedway in April that kept him from making the playoffs. Sieg has two other second-place finishes — at Iowa Speedway in 2017 and Talladega in Fall 2020.
“This is the toughest one because I had the best car. I just didn’t execute on the restart and spun the tires. I couldn’t stay beside him,” he said.
This season, Sieg has a career-best average finish of 15.1. With the second-place finish Saturday, he also earned the best finish for the No. 28 RSS Racing car as a standalone entry.
Still that second-place finish is the closest he’s come to a win.
“It [the first win]’s coming. There was just a thousand things going through the race that could’ve gone different,” he said.
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Jonathan Fjeld View All
Jonathan Fjeld is the co-owner of the The Racing Experts, LLC. He has been with TRE since 2010.
A Twin Valley, MN, native, Fjeld became a motorsports fan at just three years old (first race was the 2002 Pennsylvania 500). He worked as a contributor and writer for TRE from 2010-18. Since then, he has stepped up and covered 24 NASCAR race weekends and taken on a larger role with TRE. He became the co-owner and managing editor in 2023 and has guided the site to massive growth in that time.
Fjeld has covered a wide array of stories and moments over the years, including Kevin Harvick's final Cup Series season, the first NASCAR national series disqualification in over 50 years, Shane van Gisbergen's stunning win in Chicago and the first Cup Series race at Road America in 66 years – as well as up-and-coming drivers' stories and stories from inside the sport, like the tech it takes for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a top-tier team.
Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, N.M., where he works for KOB 4, an NBC station. He works as a digital producer and does on-air reports. He loves spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, exploring new places, being outdoors, reading books and writing among other activities. You can email him at fjeldjonathan@gmail.com