Creed Ends Month Of May On A High Note In Nashville

Sheldon Creed (Matthew Thacker/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

LEBANON, Tenn. – After a mid-spring stretch of nearly every vestige of bad luck imaginable, Haas Factory Team’s Sheldon Creed closed the month of May on an upswing at Nashville Superspeedway and got his NASCAR Xfinity Series playoff push headed back in the right direction.

Creed posted a fourth-place finish in the Tennessee Lottery 250 at the mile-and-a-third concrete oval, his first top five in two months and a sorely needed boost of momentum heading into a diverse schedule of summer races.

After qualifying the No. 00 Ollie’s Ford fifth, Creed ran among the top five virtually all race long, taking the lead off pit road during the second stage break and leading 25 laps in the second half.

Creed led until lap 119, when he was overtaken by JR Motorsports rookie Connor Zilisch in the penultimate green-flag run, but still made his presence felt over a 48-lap stint to the finish.

In the end, Creed finished fourth – right where his average running position was all night – behind winner Justin Allgaier, Zilisch, and Haas teammate Sam Mayer.

Not only was the end result a boon for Creed’s confidence, but his 48-point haul included points from both stages and catapulted him from 10th to sixth in the regular-season standings, shooting Creed back 38 points clear of the playoff cut line through 14 races.

“My Haas Factory guys brought a really fast Ollie’s Ford Mustang to the racetrack for me, and that probably helps any race weekend the most as far as taking that and being successful,” Creed noted after the race. “I tried to dive a bit deeper into my homework earlier in the week to see why I struggled at Nashville in the past and what some others are doing that are being successful, and from there tried to work on those things all day long, really.

“Just a solid day for us. It’s good to have two Haas Factory cars in the top five, and getting to lead some laps again was great also,” he added. “We were almost as fast as Xfinity mobile [internet] … just lacked a little bit on that very last run to be up with the [No.] 7 [Allgaier] and [No.] 88 [Zilisch]. We’ll take this, though. It’s definitely a great step forward for us.”

Leaving Nashville, Creed has four top fives and eight top 10s in the season’s first 14 races, with his average finish improving to 15.9 despite four crash-related DNFs of 35th or worse.

Saturday was his best finish at Nashville in four career Xfinity Series starts there and the first time he’s been on the lead lap at the concrete track at the checkered flag.

“Our great run started with a good qualifying effort, and great stops on pit road kept us in it all night,” Creed pointed out. “It was fun to lead some laps, but ultimately it was a great run for us to kick of the summer stretch.”

Creed and the rest of the Xfinity Series field get a week off before heading south of the border to Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez for the series’ return to Mexico City for the first time since 2008.

Broadcast coverage of the Chilango 150 is slated for Saturday, June 14 at 4 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.