Christian Eckes trying to adjust to ‘challenging’ first year in NASCAR Xfinity Series

With 12 races in the record books leading into a two-week break, the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season has been open for some time. But a few weeks ago, it was more or less Open Season on the series as a whole.

After an unsightly spectacle at Martinsville Speedway in which overaggressive driving led to 14 caution flags in 250 laps and the second-place driver ramming the leader out of his way and spinning him out in the final corner proved so egregious that NASCAR issued a hefty fine and points penalty for it, the series regulars of the Xfinity level — many of them 20-somethings or younger aspiring to reach the Cup Series — were subject to a rebuke from NASCAR officials and heavy criticism from veteran drivers, with Kyle Larson in particular admitting he likes to try and “embarrass” the field when he drops down for the occasional Xfinity race as a means of showing them what a long way they still have to go to claim to be among the best of the best.

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Christian Eckes, a rookie for Kaulig Racing, is one of the young drivers in the Xfinity field who has been witness to everything that came before and after Martinsville’s bumper car theatrics. Following a meeting between NASCAR officials and the Xfinity Series drivers at Darlington in which NASCAR made it clear it would begin policing the racing and potentially penalize or park drivers if their on-track conduct did not improve, Eckes said that there has been a “decent” shift in the racing product, which has remained hard nosed without stepping over the line.

“Since we had that meeting at Darlington, that was very productive for everybody,” Eckes said. “I feel like a lot of things have changed and a lot of cleaner racing has happened. I think we’ve had less cautions and less stuff happen. I think we’re heading in the right direction on that as well.”

On an individual level, Eckes and his race team would like to head in a better direction as well. While Eckes has four top-10 finishes so far, including a fifth at Circuit of the Americas, he has been enduring a rough stretch of races — including his fourth DNF of the year after an early engine failure at Texas — that has relegated him to 18th in the points standings. That’s a far cry from his 2024 season in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he had one of the most statistically successful seasons in series history with four wins, 15 top fives and 22 top 10s in 23 races.

“It’s been a challenging year to say the least. We’ve definitely not exceeded expectations by any means,” Eckes said. “We’ve had speed and have been headed in the right direction, but it’s definitely been more of a challenge than we probably anticipated. It’s definitely gonna be crucial over the next couple weeks to kind of turn it around. We’ve had good speed, we just haven’t had good finishes or really good luck in most of the races.

“A lot of missed opportunities, but still plenty of season to make up for it.”

Taking the wheel of a car that had contended for the Xfinity Series championship with A.J. Allmendinger, Eckes said that Allmendinger is the “No. 1 resource” he has, while also crediting crew chief Alex Yontz and Kaulig Racing team president Chris Rice with helping to make the jump up from Trucks to Xfinity easier on him.

“If you look at it, when it comes to the Truck Series at least, I haven’t driven anything else since 2019 except for this year,” Eckes said. “Kind of just being a little bit more adaptable is definitely something that I need to work on, and I feel like I have worked on. The last couple weeks I feel like we’ve had enough speed to run top five, top three, and unfortunately it hasn’t gone our way yet.

“But we’re heading in the right direction. We just have to keep pushing forward.”

Texas Motor Speedway marked a setback for Eckes and his race team, as problems under the hood of the No. 16 Celsius Chevrolet relegated them to a 38th-place finish, the first car out of the race. Eckes is among a number of drivers who have been brought into the fold of Celsius’ increasingly prolific sponsorship of NASCAR drivers, which now also includes Daytona 500 champion William Byron and Cup breakout candidate Ryan Preece.

“It’s an honor for sure,” Eckes said of earning Celsius as a sponsor. “I feel like it’s an elite class of drivers and people that have that partnership, and I’m honored to be a part of them. It’s been a great partnership so far and has been super cool to have everybody from Celsius out on the weekends that we’re sponsored by them.”