Ryan Sieg's near miss at Texas almost rekindled a bygone era in NASCAR
In an all-time classic on Saturday, Ryan Sieg came up short of his first NASCAR win by just two one-thousandths of a second.
Sam Mayer barely beat Sieg to the line in a race Sieg took control of with 10 laps to go. Unfortunately for Sieg, he'll have to wait on his first trip to victory lane.
Lost in the historic nature of the margin of victory, however, is the fact that Sieg nearly set the sport back a few decades with his performance on Saturday, at least temporarily.
In 1992, a relatively unknown driver by the name of Alan Kulwicki stunned the NASCAR world and won the Winston Cup championship as an owner-driver, a position in which Kulwicki took care of everything around both the office and the cockpit. After selling nearly everything he had in the summer of 1987, Kulwicki bought what turned into his championship team from Bill Terry, who Kulwicki was driving for, as Terry was looking for a way out of the sport. Five years later, he was standing at the championship podium.
It wasn't long after that Cup Series champions such as Darrell Waltrip and Bill Elliott were owner-drivers themselves, though none of them ever saw the success of Kulwicki. Tony Stewart was one of the last owner-drivers, retiring in 2016 after winning his third and final Cup Series championship driving for himself.
With the bulk of owner-drivers racing in the '90s and early 2000s, Sieg and his family-owned race team are a bit of an anomaly in a sport that has mostly phased out owner-drivers. Most drivers who own their own race team rarely see the front of the pack as Sieg did on Saturday, and while winless, his body of work heading into Saturday's race was nothing to scoff at. In 342 starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Sieg has compiled a very respectable stat line - 17 top-five finishes, 58 top-10 finishes, 265 laps led, and four appearances in the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs in the eight seasons the format has been in place.
So far in 2024, Sieg is a respectable 11th in the points standings, 12 points above the playoff cutline with two top tens. Sieg's 2024 season is nothing out of the ordinary for him and his race team, but a win on Saturday certainly would have been.
The finish of Saturday's race is certainly worth talking about, but what shouldn't be lost on NASCAR fans is how close Sieg came to taking fans into a '90s time machine in which owner-drivers weren't afterthoughts, but rather, a force to be reckoned with week in and week out.
Sieg will get another opportunity for his first career win next weekend at Talladega. The Ag Pro 300 will go green at 4 p.m. ET on Fox, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
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