For Franklin's Sam Mayer, winning his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race in his home state of Wisconsin at Road America instilled belief in his abilities.
"I know I can do it now," Sam Mayer says. "And that it's kind of done. I experienced what that feels like and what that looks like. I just have a lot more confidence showing up at the race track. I've beaten all of you before. I can do it again."
That got him into the playoffs. A walk-off win at the Charlotte Roval advanced him into the round of 8. Then Mayer claimed his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series oval-race victory at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday. And a contract for 2024 with JR Motorsports has him feeling as good as ever.
"Getting wins? Winning solves everything," Mayer says. "And obviously that helps get a contract together too. So, having everything kind of come together at once feels really good. We had a little bit of a rough patch here the last 2, 3 weeks or so. Nothing that we can really control. It's just kind of part of racing."
And he plans on doing some more winning, with his now patented hulk celebration which started during his youth days.
"Back in go-karts, when I was doing those full-time? I would, that would just be the thing I would do, whenever I would win," Mayer says. "And it would be in the go-kart as you're running across the finish line. So it would look a little cooler when you're running like 70 miles an hour past everybody. But that's kind of where it originated. It just popped back in my head."
Mayer is currently fourth in the NASCAR Xfinity points standings.
