Defending NASCAR champion aiming to join rare club

Reigning NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Daniel Hemric has a chance to do something that has only ever been done once before.

Daniel Hemric prevented Austin Cindric from becoming a back-to-back NASCAR Xfinity Series champion with a last-lap pass in the Championship 4 race at Phoenix Raceway last November.

Hemric held off the reigning champion by 0.030 seconds in a photo finish to secure not only his first championship but his first career victory.

Before the 2021 season ended, it had been confirmed that Hemric would be vacating the #18 Toyota, leaving Joe Gibbs Racing for Kaulig Racing to drive the #11 Chevrolet in 2022.

Justin Haley, then the driver of the #11 Chevrolet, had been confirmed as a full-time driver for Kaulig Racing in their first full Cup Series season.

As a result, Hemric has an opportunity to do something this season that only one other driver has ever pulled off.

In Xfinity Series history, nine drivers have won more than one championship; all are two-time champions. Of those nine two-time champions, seven won their championships in back-to-back seasons.

But only one of those seven back-to-back title winners won his two titles driving full-time for a different team in both seasons.

That driver, Tyler Reddick, won the 2018 championship for JR Motorsports. Before doing so, he had signed with Richard Childress Racing for the 2019 season. With Richard Childress Racing, he went on to win the title again in 2019 before being promoted to their Cup Series team for the 2020 season.

Even more impressively is the fact that, among all three NASCAR national series, Reddick is currently the only driver to have pulled this off, though a few back-to-back Cup Series champions did spend time competing for multiple teams during their back-to-back championship-winning seasons.

Ironically, it was Hemric whom Reddick behind the wheel of Richard Childress Racing’s #8 Chevrolet following the 2019 Cup Series season. Still seeking his first career victory, he is now in his third full season with the team at NASCAR’s top level.

Hemric hasn’t had the greatest start to the 2022 season, but he is still well-positioned to make another deep playoff run. Sitting in seventh place in the point standings through five races, he has two top 10 finishes, including a top finish of third, and he has already secured two playoff points thanks to his two stage wins.

Let’s also not forget the fact that he made it to last year’s Championship 4 without a single career Xfinity Series win — without a single career NASCAR win, for that matter — to his name, and he still managed to win the title.