Fairhope alum Grant Enfinger went from on the bubble in the Round of 8 to earning a spot in the Championship 4 field of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs with a fourth-place finish in the Round of 8 finals at Miami-Homestead on Saturday.

The former Pirate will join Corey Heim, Carson Hocevar and Ben Rhodes in fighting for the title at Phoenix Raceway on Friday, Nov. 3, on FOX Sports 1.

It will be Enfinger’s first time in the Championship 4 field since the 2020 postseason where he eventually finished fourth. He also registered top-10 finishes in 2018 (5th), 2019 (7th) and 2022 (7th)

After Enfinger won the poll and swept the stages as part of a victory in the Round of 10 at the Milwaukee Mile, he finished third in the opening Round of 8 race at Bristol Motor Speedway before a 13th-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway left him three points out of the top four with one race left before the championship.

The fourth-place finish on Saturday earned Enfinger 40 points toward the playoff standings which left him with 3,128 points for a five-point cushion over Rhodes who won a tiebreaker for the fourth and final championship spot.

With their backs against the wall after an announcement that Enfinger’s racing team, GMS Racing, would cease operation following this season, the South Alabama alum was pleased to see his team in the battle for the title.

“These guys deserve to be running for a championship in Phoenix,” Enfinger said in a post-race interview. “Pretty disappointing with our execution, you just can’t make mistakes against these guys but we were blessed to get a second opportunity. Jeff (Hensley, crew chief) made some good calls on the truck; the truck was as good as it was going to be those last two stints, that was all we had. He could have thrown a Hail Mary and maybe we would have had a shot to win it, but he made the right call to race for a championship.

“Congratulations to all these guys, we really wanted this for Mike Beam, Maury Gallagher, Ron Booth, everybody at Champion Power Equipment, Jeff Hensley; all these guys deserve to race for a championship,” Enfinger said.

In six career races at Phoenix Raceway, Enfinger has recorded a top-10 finish in half of his chances where he’s led 12 of the 835 total laps ran to help record two top-five finishes according to Racing Reference.

Enfinger’s most recent race in the desert came at last year’s season finale where he started 13th and finished sixth in the No. 23 Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet.