Allgaier’s Bristol Collapse Costs Him Regular Season Title

Justin Allgaier's damaged car is repaired on pit road Friday night at Bristol Motor Speedway. (HHP/Chris Owens photo)

BRISTOL, Tenn. – A terrible, horrible, no good, very, very, very, very bad night for Justin Allgaier in the Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway cost him more than just a strong finish.

His No. 7 Brandt Professional Agriculture Chevrolet Camaro’s miniature implosion at The Last Great Colosseum meant that the Riverton, Ill., veteran lost out on the NASCAR Xfinity Series regular season championship after seeming nearly untouchable coming into the night.

Allgaier qualified fourth at the .533-mile concrete high banks, but used a mammoth run on the high side to surge all the way to the race lead before the end of the first lap.

From there, he paced the first 51 circuits uncontested, before disaster struck on lap 52.

As Allgaier came off turn two, he was met by the wounded No. 32 of Austin Green, whose car blew a right-front tire and slammed the outside wall before bouncing back down the banking.

Allgaier tried to avoid the chaos, but the rear of his car was caught by the left-front corner of Green’s Chevrolet, nearly shearing the bumper cover off and forcing Allgaier to pit road for repairs.

That was only the start of his troubles.

The incoming point leader returned to the race after the incident on the backstretch without losing a lap and rallied back up to 18th by the end of stage one, but after cycling toward the front by staying out at the first stage break, he further put himself into a hole while locked in a battle for third place.

Allgaier was racing on the low side of Sheldon Creed when the two came together and banged doors off the second corner, sending Allgaier skidding into a long spin down the backstretch before he nosed into the inside SAFER Barrier.

That contact caused much more substantial damage to the front splitter of the No. 7, leading to an extended pit stop under the race’s fifth caution just past the halfway point.

As Allgaier was leaving his pit stall, however, he ran over an electric saw the team was using to help make repairs to the car, carrying it underneath the splitter and onto the racetrack for nearly half a lap before it finally dislodged in an eerie glow and shower of sparks.

Even more damage was done to the sensitive underbody of Allgaier’s Chevrolet because of that mishap, taking enough pace out of the car that he could do little more than limp around the Bristol concrete for the duration of the race.

A solo spin – due to how wounded the race car was by that point – was the proverbial nail in the coffin, relegating JR Motorsports’ flagship driver to a 30th-place finish. He was 10 laps down at the checkered flag.

With defending series champion and chief title rival Cole Custer leading the most laps and winning Friday night’s race, the polar opposite circumstances led to a 46-point swing in the aggregate points, meaning that Allgaier ended up three points behind Custer for the regular season crown.

“What a frustrating night,” Allgaier lamented after the race. “I can’t say thank you enough to everyone on the Brandt Professional Agriculture team. We fired off the race, did all the right things, and led the beginning of the race … where I really thought we had the best car in the field. I drove away from the 81 [Chandler Smith] and felt like I was right where we needed to be, but when the 32 [Green] blew the right front and came across and ripped the rear bumper cover off, that completely changed the game for us.

“It put us behind, but from there, I was trying to maintain the best I could,” he continued. “I’ll have to go back and watch the replay, because I don’t know what exactly happened with the 18 [Creed], but it felt like from my seat that he came off the wall a bit. Either way, it doesn’t really matter, because we got what we got. The team did the best job they could at trying to fix the car, but it was just so damaged where it really matters [aerodynamically].

“I’m disappointed, frustrated, sad … I don’t even know what all the emotions are that I’ve got right now, but we’ll rebound.”

Despite how bad the singular race at Bristol was for Allgaier, he still got some good news, in the form of the No. 1 seed for the playoff reset. Allgaier is six points ahead of Custer and 27 over the elimination line.

“We’ll move on, we’ve still got the point lead, and I’ve got a fantastic team behind me,” he noted. “There’s no doubt in my mind about our ability to go out and win [at] Kansas, so that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

In terms of his playoff record, Allgaier has never missed the postseason since the inception of the format in 2016 and has finished runner-up in the final standings twice, first in 2020 and again last year.

At Kansas Speedway specifically, site of this year’s Xfinity Series playoff opener, Allgaier has four top five and 10 top-10 finishes in 14 starts at the 1.5-mile oval.

Though he’s never won in the Sunflower State, Allgaier did sit on the pole for last year’s Kansas playoff race and led 40 laps before being swept up in a crash on a lap-97 restart that cost him a lap and left him with an 18th-place finish.

Allgaier will look to put that bad memory behind him in the Kansas Lottery 300, the opening race of the Round of 12 for the Xfinity Series playoffs. Broadcast coverage is slated for Saturday, Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. ET, live on CW Network, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.