NASCAR adding ‘international provisionals’ to Xfinity field for Mexico City race

NASCAR announced it has added two additional starting positions (or “international provisionals”) for the Xfinity Series race in Mexico City. This means that up to 40 drivers will take part in the race at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez on Saturday, June 14.

The teams that use the 39th and 40th starting positions will not be eligible for prize money, regardless of where they finish in the race. NASCAR also said that they will not receive credit for the win or any playoff benefits associated with the win. The teams in the final two positions will also not be eligible to receive playoff points associated with the stage and/or race victory.

The NASCAR Xfinity Series is returning to Mexico City for the first time since the 2008 season. The series began having races at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in 2005, and it was the first points-paying NASCAR national series race held outside the United States since 1958. This year’s race will be a support race for the NASCAR Cup Series.

More on the NASCAR Mexico City Xfinity race

“This, for me, is like a dream,” Daniel Suárez said in a press release in August. “This is really a dream come true. Exactly 10 years ago, I was here racing NASCAR Mexico in 2014, and I won a race here before leaving NASCAR México and moving full-time to the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2015, and I knew that some, some years before my time, the NASCAR Xfinity Series had the opportunity to come to Mexico for a few years and I remember thinking what a dream it would be for me to race the NASCAR Cup Series one day in my country. I remember thinking that, and fast forward now nine years later, and here we are in Mexico City.”

“This has been on our radar for a long time,” Ben Kennedy, NASCAR executive vice president, chief venue & racing innovation officer, said in the same press release. “We’ve been talking about the continued iteration of our schedule, right? You can go back a few years, went to new markets like Nashville and Austin, Texas. We went to the Coliseum for the Clash. … We went to our first street race in downtown Chicago, and this is going to be another first for us in a lot of ways. This is going to be certainly a monumental event for us, the first time we’re going south of the border.”