Alfredo Challenges For Top 10 In Strong Pocono Showing

LONG POND, Pa. – Our Motorsports’ Anthony Alfredo continued to show his small team’s strength Saturday at Pocono Raceway and nearly came away with a top-10 finish in the Explore the Pocono Mountains 225.

He didn’t earn any stage points after starting 16th and being stuck in the mid-pack early on, but Alfredo and crew chief Josh Graham pulled the trigger on a strategy play that ultimately worked out in multiple pieces during the second half of the 90-lap race.

Alfredo short-pitted before the second stage break at lap 40, allowing him to stay out under caution and restart fourth to begin stage three. A quick yellow, however, led the 25-year-old to come back down pit road for four fresh tires, planning to go the remaining 42 laps without stopping again.

The day’s sixth caution, when Stephen Mallozzi stalled on the backstretch with 21 to go, allowed that plan to build to fruition. Alfredo stayed out along with then-leader Justin Allgaier to put himself inside the top four for the next two restarts.

Perhaps most notably, Alfredo pushed Allgaier clear to the lead with 12 to go and challenged for second place, but picked up some left rear damage from the restart that hurt his car’s aerodynamics on the long straightaways of the 2.5-mile ‘Tricky Triangle’.

He drifted back to eighth before the day’s final caution with eight to go, however, got swallowed up on the four-lap sprint to the finish that followed and ended up with a 14th-place finish in the No. 5 Botticelli Foods/Shop Rite Chevrolet Camaro.

It was a race that featured a ton of promise, as Alfredo continues to chase a potential playoff berth in the closing stages of the regular season.

“What a day we had going at Pocono,” said Alfredo. “Our strategy put us in a great position late in the race, but when we restarted fourth on the second-to-last restart, we got hit from behind and ended up getting some left-rear damage that slowed the car drastically on the straightaways. I believe we were definitely going to secure a top-10 finish before that happened.

“Even though the outcome on paper wasn’t as representative of the speed we had late in the race, it was still a great call by Josh and another great day overall for the Our Motorsports team.”

Alfredo remains 15th in the regular season standings with seven races to go before the playoffs begin. He’s 95 points behind the current cutoff spot, held by JR Motorsports’ Sammy Smith.

The Ridgefield, Conn., native may need a victory to crack the postseason field, but with superspeedway opportunities at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway and Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway looming and a short track in Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway as the regular season finale, those chances still loom large.

Alfredo and the Xfinity Series field will contest the final race before the two-week Olympic break on Saturday, July 20, as NASCAR returns to the historic 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval for the first time since 2020.

Broadcast coverage of the Pennzoil 250 at the Brickyard is slated for 3:30 p.m. ET, live on USA, the IMS Radio Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.