A determined, late-race rally fell by the wayside for Connor Mosack in Saturday’s Road America 180 NASCAR Xfinity Series race when a rear-gear issue forced the Charlotte, North Carolina, native to park his No. 19 Porter Pipe & Supply Toyota GR Supra for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) during the race’s first of two attempts at a green-white-checkered finish. Mosack qualified seventh and maintained his position in the top-10 for most of the opening stage despite his battles with a loose condition in the high-speed corners of Road America’s 4.048-mile, 14-turn circuit, as well as a braking issue. He finished the stage 12th. After myriad adjustments by the JGR crew, Mosack jumped three positions on the opening lap of the second stage. He made his way up to seventh as the stage was coming to a close before he was spun off track in turn six as a result of contact with Josh Berry, which dropped him back to 30th. Undaunted, Mosack made up 16 positions over the next nine laps and lined up 14th for the fateful lap-44 restart, during which the rear-gear issue ended his bid.
Connor Mosack driver of the No. 19 Porter Pipe & Supply Toyota GR Supra for Joe Gibbs Racing:
“Struggled a little bit at the beginning. I feel like the balance wasn’t bad, we were just a little loose in the high-speed stuff, especially through the Carousel and the Kink. But I thought we could really maintain or be a little bit better everywhere else. The brakes were really good for a few laps in the run and then we started having issues with that. It might’ve been something I was doing, or they just might not have been getting cool enough, but something to look at, for sure. I feel like we were managing that through the whole race and seemed to get them better. We were working our way toward the front until we got turned around by the 8 (Josh Berry) in turn six. That kind of killed our progress, but I thought we still had enough time to come back and get a good finish. But with what happened on our last restart, we didn’t have a chance to race there at the end. I just hate it for our Porter Pipe & Supply guys. It’s two races in a row I feel like we had a good car and didn’t have a good finish to show for it. I think we probably had a top-five car, at least, the cars that ended up finishing in the top-five are the ones we were racing for the majority of the day. Especially with all the chaos there at the end, I think we would’ve at least had a shot at it, but we’ll never know, now.”
Notes:
● This was Mosack’s 15th career NASCAR Xfinity Series start and his 13th of the season. It was his third start of 2023 with Joe Gibbs Racing.
● Mosack qualified seventh for the Road America 180 with a lap of 132.410 seconds at an average speed of 110.058 mph around the 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course. It was his second straight top-10 qualifying effort and his third top-10 qualifying performance in his last four Xfinity Series starts.
Next Up:
Mosack heads to Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, where he will pull double duty, competing in the ARCA Menards Series race on Friday and the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday. Mosack will drive the No. 18 Mobil 1 Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Henry Ford Health 200 ARCA race on Aug. 4 and the No. 24 Toyota GR Supra for Sam Hunt Racing in the Cabo Wabo 250 Xfinity Series race on Aug. 5. The Henry Ford Health 200 gets underway at 6 p.m. EDT on Friday with live coverage on FS1 and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. The Cabo Wabo 250 starts at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday with live coverage on NBC and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
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