Aric Almirola to run first Xfinity race since 2018 at COTA

The last time Aric Almirola raced in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he was in his first Cup Series season with Stewart-Haas Racing. Five years later, having put off retirement plans, he will return to the series for Circuit of the Americas on Saturday.

He will drive the #08 Ford Mustang for SS-Green Light Racing. The start will provide him with additional preparation ahead of the Cup race at COTA the following day, especially as road courses are not a particularly strong suit for him with just two top tens in thirty-four tries and COTA finishes of twenty-sixth and nineteenth.

Almirola last raced in the Xfinity Series in 2018 when he ran the Daytona and Watkins Glen races for his Cup team Stewart-Haas Racing, crashing out of the first and finishing fifth in the latter. He made sporadic starts for Biagi-DenBeste Racing from 2014 to 2017 until the team was absorbed by SHR, winning twice at Daytona in 2016 and Talladega in 2017.

He ran the full schedule in 2011 for JR Motorsports and finished fourth in points. He has three career wins in the series, with the first coming at Milwaukee in 2007 under controversial circumstances after being replaced mid-race due to sponsor demands.

At the Cup level, he sits twenty-seventh in the standings with a best run of sixteenth at Las Vegas. He had earned a head start after winning his Daytona 500 qualifying duel to begin the season with ten bonus points. Almirola, now in his sixth year with SHR and twelfth as a full-time Cup driver, planned to retire after 2022 but elected to return for 2023. Like in Xfinity, he is a three-time Cup race winner.

Although Gray Gaulding had been tabbed with driving the #08 full-time, he was replaced by Almirola for COTA in what Gaulding explained was a “previous commitment” by the team. Gaulding, who was twenty-eighth in points after five races with a pair of twentieth-place finishes, will return at Richmond on 1 April.