It was a good time for Riley Herbst to tie a best career finish of second. See, the rest of his teammates yet again had a bad race.

Brandon Jones wrecked on the opening lap for the second time in the last three races. This time, it wasn’t his fault like it was in Pocono.

Jeb Burton lost control of his No. 8 Chevrolet in Turn 2 and spun right in front of Jones. The Georgia native had no where to go. He’d finish last in 36th. His last four finishes are – 16th, 36th, 37th and 36th respectively.

Then, Harrison Burton had an uncontrolled tire penalty early on, then spun after making up all that ground in the end on Lap 129. He finished 17th. His last four finishes are 32nd, 32nd, 25th and 17th respectively.

Herbst, well he finally took a positive spin for JGR and made a great pass on the final restart to get up to second in his No. 18 Toyota.

“Everybody on this Monster Energy Supra – we did a good job all day,” Herbst said. “We ran probably fourth all day. We over-adjusted the car there at the end and got too tight. All in all, we’ve had speed all year, we just haven’t been able to capitalize, mostly on my part, in these final stages of the races. Once we start capitalizing, we’ll start getting good finishes like this. This was a good one.”

Herbst, is starting to find his groove. He now has four top 10 finishes in his last six tries on the season.

“It’s absolutely huge,” Herbst continued. “Obviously tomorrow we’re going to have to start deep in the field again. I don’t think we got into the top-12 in points. If we keep running like this, we’ll jump into the top-12 in points. All in all, just kind of a confidence booster to me. I know I belong in this series and I can run with these guys, I just have to put full races together and we did that tonight. I’m proud of everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing and thank Monster Energy for the opportunity.”

The JGR driver started 23rd based off owners points draw. He’s trying to get into the top 12, but with more runs like he showed on Thursday, that feat may come simple soon.

“It was cool. It’s cool and kind of a shot in the arm for this No. 18 Monster Energy team. We’ve had speed, we just haven’t been able to finish these races and we did that tonight. Hopefully, we can carry on tomorrow and have another really good points day and try to go for the victory.”

Herbst, says that starting spots at Kentucky though can make or break you. He wasn’t too happy with how hard it was to pass on Thursday night, even though he came from 23rd to finish second.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Herbst of the difficulty of passing on Thursday. “This track was probably the dirtiest race track I’ve ever seen to fire-off. I hate that my teammate (Brandon Jones) got caught up in a dirty race track. I couldn’t see the guy in front of me so that made passing that much more difficult.

“When you run somebody down from a straightaway and you just sit a half car length back in their wake and you can’t do anything because the car is just out of the race track. Luckily, we have a really fast pit crew at Joe Gibbs Racing and they tried to get us out in front. I think we gained spots on pit road all night long so that was huge.”

The other factor against him is that there’s no practice. For a rookie, he’s never raced on these tracks in an Xfinity Series car before.

“I think a lot of people kind of forget, I haven’t been to any of these places and we’re firing off with no practice,” said Herbst of the lack of practice for these races. “All my testing that I was scheduled to do is gone, wiped away.

“I think a lot of people forget that I’m firing off at these race tracks that I’ve never been to. Obviously, I’m expected to win in the equipment I’m in. Sometimes I think I need to slow down and look back and realize that I’ve never been to these places and these guys have two, three or even four years on me in this series and we’re running with them. That’s a big confidence booster and I’ve only run here one time in the ARCA Series back in 2017. I think the last two years it was off the schedule.”