Justin Allgaier muscled his way to his first-ever superspeedway victory in the Xfinity Series at Daytona after starting in the very back.
The 37-year-old had finished second at Daytona twice before, but he outdrove Sheldon Creed in a second Overtime restart to claim the first win of Friday Night’s Wawa 250 Powered by Coca-Cola by just .005 seconds – the fourth-closest finish in Xfinity Series history.
It was so close that even Allgaier himself was surprised on seeing the replay after accepting the checkered flag.
“Oh, did I win? I think I did, right?” he questioned. “That angle looks bad, doesn’t it?”
“First of all, all the fans out here, thank you all,” he said. “I’ve waited for this win for a long time, wanted to win here so bad and we’ve been so close. This team, I just can’t say enough.”
The final battle was the culmination of a battle from the back that took place all race. His team was forced to come back from a pass-through penalty after repeat inspection issues.
“Yeah, we had an oversight yesterday when we came to the track and put a car through inspection that just wasn’t what we wanted rolling through inspection,” he admitted. “And, unfortunately, that cost us a pass through. But the team never quit, never gave up, and we rallied and obviously we put ourselves in good position and the pit strategy was awesome.”
“To come through the adversity we had to come through and to not really be sure what we were going to have there at the end… we just did all the things we needed to do. Pit crew were lights out. Eddie D’Hondt, my spotter, was fantastic.”
“Honestly, just the end there, I can’t thank those guys enough for the pushes that we had. Just so many people to thank, it’s just unbelievable. This is going to be a good one for sure.”
As for how much the race means: “More than you know,” Allgaier said.
“Man, it’s special. This is Daytona, this is one of the iconic places in the world and I’m just so happy to be here.”
The win puts him in range for the Regular Season Championship with just two races to go before the Playoff field is set and the bonus points are apportioned.
Austin Hill ran up front all race alongside his Richard Childress Racing teammate Sheldon Creed. The two won Stage 1 and Stage 2 respectively. But with Hill involved in the restart crash that brought out the first Overtime, it fell to Creed to take advantage of his strong car.
He came up just short of his first-ever Xfinity Series win, though, despite getting the run coming to the flag to pass Parker Kligerman and challenge Allgaier.
“Honestly, hats off to RCR for building great racecars, especially the speedway cars,” Creed said. “ECR Motors, everyone in motor shop doing a phenomenal job. We have some momentum finally, back-to-back second places, and I’m just cleaning it up and doing better myself just putting races together.”
“I thought we killed it tonight, second in Stage 1 and won Stage 2, kind of got dropped there with a few to go and was just able to stay clean – I don’t know if there’s a scratch on it,” he laughed. “Just amazing night for us. Happy for all JR Motorsports and Allgaier.”
“Tonight, I felt like I just did everything right, like I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks. Just got to keep building on that, give my team confidence, give myself confidence, and it’s just a good time to be heating up,” he concluded.
Daniel Hemric finished a quiet third after staying out of trouble late and taking advantage of the late chaos to advance his position.
“We kind of just hung around fifth to tenth place all day. We had okay balance, but I was trying to be really patient and kind of play the manufacturer and team game there and that patience ultimately paid off for us,” he admitted.
“We came here to do what we had to do, we were able to get a couple stage points each stage and get a top five out of it,” Hemric added.
Parker Kligerman finished fourth in an important performance for his Playoff chances after running up near the front all night. The points gain was made larger with his cutline rival Riley Herbst suffering a right-front tire blowout after a steering rack issue at the end of Stage 1.
Herbst still managed to finish 24th, two laps down. Though Kligerman wasn’t able to secure any stage points, his strong finish brings within just a handful of points of Herbst and the all-important Playoff cutline.
“Obviously putting ourselves in the top five late put us in position there, but then I lined up on the last restart and the last lap and I’ve got the 00 [Custer] behind me and I’m trying to back up to him and he keeps backing up further and I realize that he’s the 98 [Herbst]’s teammate, and he admitted afterwards that he didn’t want to push us,” Kligerman explained.
“So we really had no help. And that’s a tough way to try to take the lead, we still had a run off of four, it just didn’t materialize. I’m proud of these guys, another top five. If we keep clicking these off the next two weeks, we’ll be fine to make the Playoffs,” he said.
“And if we do this in the Playoffs, we’ll be very confident about moving on round-to-round,” he added. “I’m proud of this team, this is a big effort for a single-car team like that, no real teammates to find up there.”
Kligerman was able to find his way through the incidents that defined the night. 30 of the 38 cars were damaged in some way from crashes, and keeping the car in one piece throughout the 100-lap event proved critical to be in position to win at the end.
It was a big wreck that brought out the first Overtime. A restart on lap 99 caused the biggest damage of the night when Austin Hill moved to the outside for an aggressive move on part-time Trevor Bayne, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, which sent both drivers spinning and collected much of the field. Kligerman was in front of that wreck and ended up all clear.
Other issues throughout the night included a lap 42 incident where Anthony Alfredo got loose and darted up the track in the middle of three-wide racing, hitting Brandon Jones and Brett Moffitt. The wreck also collected Connor Mosack, Alex Guenette, Joe Graff Junior, Natalie Decker, and Ryan Seig.
The lap 99 restart came from a single-car spin by Jeb Burton. He managed not to hit any other cars and limit the damage to his own, but as drivers behind checked up to avoid, the field came plowing in. Justin Haley and Caesar Bacarelli sustained the most damage.
Finally, the second Overtime was brought out when Blaine Perkins collided with Josh Williams and Josh Berry after getting loose midpack and collected a host of other drivers.
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