HOMESTEAD, Fla. -  All three Ford Mustangs finished inside the top-12 Saturday, led by Austin Cindric’s 6th place effort on the first 1.5-mile oval track of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Ryan Sieg drove to a ninth-place finish while Riley Herbst was 12th.

The reigning series champion, Cindric had a strong run going in Stage 1 but stayed out during a late-stage caution. The 22 restarted in the lead on old tires but fell to 14th by the end of the 10-lap run.

Stage 2 was the mirror image of Stage 1. When fluid from Parsons’ car necessitated the third caution of the race on Lap 68, drivers who had stayed out under the Lap 26 caution to save a set of tires came to pit road — Cindric among them.

Cindric restarted 22nd and in less than three laps took the lead on the way to a stage win and a playoff point.

Cindric led the field to green on Lap 87. But Cindric was not a major player in the overtime. 

The NASCAR XFINITY Series continues with the beginning of a west-coast swing on Saturday, March 6 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.  The race is scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. on FS1 and PRN.

FORD FINISHING RESULTS:
6th - Austin Cindric
9th - Ryan Sieg
12th - Riley Herbst

AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 PPG Ford Mustang (Finished 6th)
“I feel like we probably deserved to be a top-five car and maybe if we made some different decisions there on the choose, who knows, we maybe would have given ourselves a better shot to win the race in our PPG Ford Mustang. At the same time, I think we did a pretty good job on strategy. All in all, it was an okay day. We definitely learned a lot and we tried to make a short-run car into a long-run car and we probably just hurt ourselves for when the sun went down. Lesson learned there and definitely some good info there moving forward in the season.”

WERE YOU MISSING SOMETHING ON THE LONG RUN?
“Yeah, we weren’t great up until about lap 40 and then I could maintain running the wall. It was just something we have fought here in the past and we were unable to find the right knob to turn for it.”

RILEY HERBST, No. 98 Monster Energy Ford Mustang (Finished 12th)
“For sure, I think the first two stages we were just biding time because we had to start so deep in the field. Then at the start of Stage 3, we had good track position but the 7 just came across our nose and we got damage and had to go all the way back in the field again. We made our way back up to 12th. It kind of sucks but we will go to Vegas now.”