By: Mitchell Breuer

2020 has been an interesting year for Anthony Alfredo.

The year was poised to be a big one regardless of what happened, as he signed a deal to make his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut with Richard Childress Racing, running a part-time schedule in the No. 21.When the season resumed, Alfredo was able to continue his strong start five more top-10’s, which included a career-best finish of fourth at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“It’s been great,” Alfredo said. “All things considered, obviously it’s not the year I don’t think anybody expected it to be, but I’ve been working my hardest to make the most of it, including my on- and off-track activities.”

One off track activity Alfredo has been involved is iRacing; launching his own league on the server, winning an “Saturday Night Thunder” event that NASCAR hosted, and, even grabbing a multi-race sponsorship with iRacing.

“It’s been a group, an awesome partnership with them to actually go from sim to reality and work with them in real life on the track,” Alfredo said. “To go back racing in real life, have them on the car, along with a bunch of other great partners of ours and have some fantastic starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.”

This weekend, Alfredo will not travel with Xfinity to Road America, instead reuniting with DGR-Crosley Racing at Michigan International Speedway to run the ARCA Menards Series race on Sunday.

He worked with the team last year in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series in a part-time effort and scored two top-10’s.

“It’s kind of that getting the band back together feeling, so it’s going to be a good time and although I’m not working with the same exact crew I worked with on the truck series side last year, I got to know everyone at that team very well,” Alfredo said. ”Blake Bainbridge, who will be my crew chief, is someone I also just knew from being in the shop regularly, and have been spending time with him in the shop and the guys have been getting the car ready for this weekend. I’m looking forward to going out there and not having any pressure.”

He will pilot the No. 17, which has been shared by brothers, Tanner and Taylor Gray this season. Alfredo hopes his upper-level experience will propel him to a successful day that ends in victory lane.

“I’m just ready to go out there, have a good time and hopefully get DGR-Crosley their first ARCA win of the year,” Alfredo said.

Looking ahead at 2021, the Connecticutnative does not have anything concreate yet, but already has an idea of what he wants to be doing.

“I definitely know what I want to do next year and that’s been the same goal since the beginning of this season, which has been to go run full time in the NASCAR Xfinity series,” Alfredo said.“The biggest thing for me has been going out there taking advantage of every opportunity and learning as much as I can, get better each week, grow as a team, build that chemistry and put ourselves in contention to win and, of course win some races before the year’s over, or at least my schedule is over. I’d love to be doing that full-time next year and so far it’s been going well. The biggest thing is just developing more relationships with sponsors so that we can have enough funding to sign that contract and make it happen.”