Consistent Day At Darlington Nets Eckes A Rebound Top 10

Christian Eckes in action Saturday at Darlington Raceway. (Scotte Sprinkle/Race Face Digital photo)

DARLINGTON, S.C. – NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie-of-the-year contender Christian Eckes rebounded from back-to-back DNFs with a strong top-10 effort Saturday at Darlington Raceway.

The nine-time Craftsman Truck Series winner is in his first year with Kaulig Racing in the Xfinity Series, driving the team’s flagship No. 16 Chevrolet, and has had flashes of brilliance early in the season.

Eckes had back-to-back top 10s at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, and at Arizona’s Phoenix Raceway. However, the past two weeks were much rougher, featuring an engine failure at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway and a grinding late-race crash last week at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

The Track Too Tough to Tame was kinder to Eckes, however, being the facility he made his rookie test at prior to the season kickoff. He never ran lower than 11th all race, the only driver to remain inside the top 15 for all 200 miles, and earned points in both stages along the way.

After driving to a second-place run in stage two, Eckes kept himself inside the top six during the final stage despite a slight air pressure adjustment early that snugged up his race car for the first half of the final stage.

A late caution allowed for a final set of fresh tires, but Eckes was caught in the middle of a three-wide sandwich exiting his pit stall that created contact on both sides of his No. 16 Black’s Tire & Auto Chevrolet.

Though he felt like the incident broke something on the car, Eckes still dug his heels in to climb from ninth on the final restart and finish seventh – his third top 10 of his rookie season.

“To even finish was good,” Eckes said post-race after assessing the late damage. “It’s been a struggle to start this year. The last two weeks I’ve felt like we’ve had a good car. The speed’s there. We just [have] to get the results.

"Our No. 16 Black’s Tire Service Chevrolet was really strong all day. I wish we hadn’t had that pit road contact; I think we could have been in the fight with them (to win) at the end. Unfortunately, I just felt like something broke after that. The balance was unrecoverable, but we survived to get a decent finish out of it.”

With eight races down in the season, most every track type that Eckes will see in the Xfinity Series has been raced on at least once. But even with a little bit of a playbook now, Eckes still feels like it’s a bit of an unknown just how good everything is inside his team, at least for now.

“It’s kind of hard to tell,” the Middletown, N.Y., native said regarding where he stacks up amid the season-long contenders. “These first seven have been a little bit rough, but at the same time we have shown speed on all different types of tracks. We’ll just keep moving on.

“I’m pretty excited with how our day went. Obviously, [I] felt like we were more capable than seventh, but that damage kind of took us out of it.”

Eckes leaves Darlington having gained four positions in the point standings to 16th. He sits just 15 points behind Jeb Burton for the final spot in the playoffs, though it’s still early in the regular season.

The next stop for the NASCAR Xfinity Series will be April 12 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, marking the third race in the Dash 4 Cash bonus program.

Broadcast coverage of the SciAps 300 airs at 5 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.