NASCAR: Daniel Hemric finally poised to break through?

With 182 NASCAR national series starts and no wins, could Daniel Hemric finally reach victory lane in one of the next few Xfinity Series races?

Daniel Hemric is off to a strong start in his first NASCAR Xfinity Series season with Joe Gibbs Racing. He sits in second place in the regular season point standings with a runner-up finish, three third place finishes, 148 laps led, an average finish of 7.4 and only one result outside of the top nine. But he still has a zero in the win column.

Hemric is the only driver sitting in the top 12 in the standings without a win in any of NASCAR’s three national series. In 182 combined starts between the Cup Series, Xfinity Series and Truck Series, he has 50 top five finishes, 10 of which are runner-up finishes.

With a diverse set of tracks slated to host the next four races, could Hemric finally pick up his maiden win?

Talladega Superspeedway – Saturday, April 24 at 4:00 p.m. ET

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Next up on the schedule is the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) high-banked Talladega Superspeedway, a track known to be a wild card. Hemric has an average finish of 18.71 in seven races at the track across the three national series, but that doesn’t tell the full story.

Hemric has finished on the lead lap in only three of his seven races there but has run better recently. He finished in 11th place in his most recent Truck Series start at Talladega in 2016 and recorded his only career Cup Series top five finish there in 2019.

He also finished in fifth place in the Xfinity Series race there last fall for JR Motorsports. That partial season saw him finish just 14 races in 21 starts, but he recorded an average finish of 7.71 among the races in which he was running at the finish. In a season that saw him involved in a number of wrecks, he was still able to avoid trouble at Talladega.

Darlington Raceway – Saturday, May 8 at 1:00 p.m. ET

After a week off, the series is scheduled to return to the tricky four-turn, 1.366-mile (2.198-kilometer) Darlington Raceway. Like he has at Talladega, Hemric has run well in the races he has finished there.

Hemric finished in 18th place in his first Xfinity Series start at Darlington in 2017 before recording an improved 11th place finish the following year. More recently, he finished in sixth in the spring race there last year. While he has not yet led any laps at the track, those results show a move in the right direction.

His most recent start ended in trouble, however, with a wreck on only the third lap in the second race there last year. His lone Cup Series start at the track in 2019 also ended in a crash.

Dover International Speedway – Saturday, May 15 at 1:30 p.m. ET

Perhaps Hemric’s best chance at recording his inaugural victory is at the four-turn, 1-mile (1.609-kilometer) high-banked Dover International Speedway.

Hemric has three top five finishes and four top 10 finishes in his last four Xfinity Series starts at the Monster Mile. He recorded a best finish of third place in the spring race in 2018, led 23 laps and finished in seventh in the fall race later that year, and finished in fifth in his most recent start there last year.

He has completed all but one lap and has an average finish of 6.4 in five Xfinity Series races there, and that average finish is his best at a track where he has more than two starts.

In the Truck Series, he has two top 10 finishes in two starts at Dover, a fourth place finish in 2015 and a ninth place finish in 2016. However, his Cup Series starts didn’t go as well. He finished six laps off the lead lap and outside of the top 20 in both races in 2019.

Circuit of the Americas – Saturday, May 22 at 4:00 p.m. ET

NASCAR’s first ever visit to the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) road course in Austin, Texas, known for its Formula 1 races, will be a new experience for most people involved. The 20-turn, 3.41-mile (5.488-kilometer) “long course” layout will be used for the event.

While there are no past COTA results for Hemric, he has run well on road courses in general. He has recorded five top three finishes in 11 Xfinity Series road course races. He finished runner-up at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in 2017 and recorded third place finishes at Mid-Ohio and Road America in 2018, the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval last season and the Daytona International Speedway road course earlier this year.

He has finished in third place in three of his last six Xfinity Series road course races, with two of the other three starts ending in DNFs. He has also run well in two Truck Series road course races, where he has finishes of fourth and third place at the tricky 10-turn, 2.459-mile (3.957-kilometer) Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

While Hemric has yet to win a race in one of NASCAR’s three national series, there’s reason to believe that he can break that drought in one of the next four races on the schedule.