Seven races into his full time NASCAR Cup Series career in competing in the No. 35 Monster Energy Toyota Camry XSE for 23XI Racing, Riley Herbst is looking forward to this weekend’s trip to Darlington Raceway.
“I’m walking out of the shop right now,” said Herbst from the 23XI Racing Airspeed headquarters in Huntersville, North Carolina. “I just got done working out and now I’m going to prepare a little bit more for the weekend and then I’m going to go down to Darlington.”
Coming off five seasons in the Xfinity Series where he competed for Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing, which yielded three race wins, 34 top five fin ishes and 86 top 10s, Herbst explained what the graduation to the Cup Series has been like.
“It’s pretty awesome,” he said. “It’s obviously a huge jump from Xfinity to Cup, but everybody at 23XI Racing has helped me along the way and the mentality right now is just small victories and trying to improve each week. The results haven’t been showing it, but we’ve been doing the process right and that’s what counts right now. We’ll just keep grinding away it.
“Everything that you’ve learned since you were a young kid is fundamentally different now in Cup. The suspension being independent rear suspension is different. The throttle linkage is different. The steering system is back to a steering rack. The tires are wider. So, everything is just different from what I’ve learned, and what everybody has learned their whole life.”
New to 23XI Racing in 2025, Herbst has faced, front and center, the high expectations the 23XI Racing organization places upon their drivers and their race results.
“The expectati ons at 23XI Racing are extremely high, which is good,” offered Herbst. “That means you have fast race cars and good people around you and that’s all I can ask for. Now it is about capitalizing on this opportunity and just trying to be better.
“We talk about expectations quite often. It’s a work in progress. It’s just such a big jump and all so huge that you have to take it in stride. Obviously, I want to win and we all want to win, but it’s about finding victories each weekend and getting the weekend to go your way. We’ve been doing that. We’ve been improving. We’ve just been trying to stick to our process and what we know we can do.