NASCAR Cup rookie Riley Herbst returns for select Xfinity starts with Joe Gibbs Racing, starting from COTA

Riley Herbst is set to make his return to the NASCAR Xfinity Series, running select races for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, the team announced on Tuesday (February 25).

Herbst, who is a NASCAR Cup Series rookie, will drive the JGR’s “All-Star” #19 car in four Xfinity Series races. He will make his first Xfinity start of the 2025 season with this week’s Focused Health 250 at Circuit of the Americas (COTA). The rest of his three-event schedule has not been announced yet.

The COTA Xfinity race will be held on March 1 at 2:30 pm ET. His ride will be supported by sponsorship backing from Monster Energy. This was his first race with JGR since he left the organization in November 2020.

Announcing the news on X, JGR wrote:

“@rileyherbst returns to JGR’s Xfinity Series program for four races in 2025 starting this week at COTA.”

Riley Herbst moved to full-time NASCAR Cup Series for this season after spending the last five seasons in the Xfinity Series. He currently drives the #35 Toyota full-time for 23XI Racing.

The 26-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada, native has improved his consistency over the past four Xfinity Series seasons and is now a three-race winner. In the last four seasons, he drove for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in the series but transitioned back to Toyota in 2025.

Last year, Riley Herbst won two races in the Xfinity Series, including the season-finale race at Phoenix Raceway, and made it into the playoffs before wrapping the season in seventh place in the final championship standings.

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How Riley Herbst performed at Circuit of the Americas

Riley Herbst has struggled on road courses in the Xfinity Series. In four Xfinity starts at COTA, he has one top-10 finish, which came in 2023. In the other three races, he has finished 16th, 26th, and 34th.

As he has had a topsy-turvy result at COTA, the extra seat time in the #19 Xfinity car will be beneficial for him when he competes in the Cup Series EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix on Sunday (March 2).

So far in his NASCAR Cup Series rookie campaign, Herbst finished 12th in the Daytona Duel and 17th at Daytona International Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Several drivers have been using the #19 Joe Gibbs Racing behind the wheel this season, including Justin Bonsignore, Aric Almirola, Christopher Bell, and Chase Briscoe.