Justin Allgaier gambled at Bristol, and it paid off. The JR Motorsports driver clearly had speed, finishing second in Stage 1 and runner-up in Stage 2, but chose to pit from the lead with a little over fifty laps to go.
The call put Allgaier all the way back in 14th from the lead, but it took him less than twenty laps to drive back to the top five and even less time to get up to second over Daniel Hemric.
Making the move for the lead, and the eventual win, was Allgaier’s toughest challenge of his charge to the front, but when the two lead cars ran up on lapped traffic, Hemric stuck with his high line and was blocked by the slower cars, allowing Allgaier to sweep under him with twelve laps to go.
“How cool was it that I got to battle with the bossman Dale Jr?” Allgaier asked after getting out his car. Earnhardt ran in the lead for much of the race – 47 laps – but was forced off the track by a fire.
“Just cannot say enough of this team,” he added. “This team has done such an amazing job at this racetrack since I started at JR Motorsports, we’ve led a lot of laps. The monkey was definitely on our back.”
“The pit strategy there… man, coming down pit road all by ourselves, that was nerve-wracking,” Allgaier admitted.
Allgaier’s crew chief Jim Pohlman, who made the call, is a replacement crew chief for Allgaier after JR Motorsports shuffled his longtime crew chief Jason Burdett to the No. 9 team. Things seem to be going well for Allgaier though, as he announced that he’d re-signed with JR Motorsports for 2024 in the Xfinity Series earlier this week.
“I’m speechless, man,” Allgaier said. “Jim Pohlman and I had circled this race on our calendar when we started the year, before we ever took a green flag lap, we said ‘we want to win Bristol.’ And man, we won Bristol!”
The win gives him a guaranteed spot in the Round of 8 of the Playoffs and puts him one step closer to racing for a championship at Phoenix Raceway.
“I don’t know if this is shots fired for the Playoffs, but I mean, it feels good going into these next two knowing that we can have some fun and go get some wins.”
For Kaulig Racing’s Daniel Hemric, finishing second was still a feat, considering he had 48-lap older tires with which to try to hold off Allgaier – and he did for several laps.
“It just takes grit, man,” Hemric said. “This race team’s full of it, full of heart. It was a hell of day. We struggled there… in the first, I don’t know 70 percent of the race.”
“I thought maybe if I could hold the 7 off to get to the last little group of lapped traffic, maybe I would have a chance to at least keep him side-by-side, keep him honest, down to the checkered flag,” he added. “Ugh, I just want it so bad for these guys, everyone at Kaulig Racing deserves it.
Like Allgaier, Hemric re-signed with his team this week, but he’s moving up with his team to the Cup Series, where he’ll replace Justin Haley in the No. 31 car.
John Hunter Nemechek finished third, but he didn’t have the speed to compete for the win.
“I needed a little bit,” he admitted of the closing laps. “Really solid night for our 20 team. It sucks we can’t get the win here, I’ve been so close so many times and just haven’t been able to do it and it haunts me to this day.”
“But overall, really solid points. I think we’re 65 to the cutoff, a full race ahead, which is really good,” Nemechek said. “Just a solid day, I was racing smart.”
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Cole Custer and Kaulig Racing’s Chandler Smith rounded out the top five.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. ended up victorious as an owner but out of the race as a driver. Despite moving up from his 15th-place starting position all the way to the lead by the beginning of Stage 3, his foray back into the Xfinity Series ended in flames.
“I’ve got a hole in my pants,” JR said, showing his burnt race suit. “Somehow or another the shifter tunnel caught on fire, I saw some smoke in the car, and I smelt it,” he explained. “I felt it, obviously.”
He was battling for fourth before slowing down and pulling onto pit road, but ended up credited with a 30th-place finish.
He was also left frustrated with the track workers. He pulled into pit road and gestured for help getting out of his car, but NASCAR workers did not come to him since no caution was thrown. Instead, the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing pit crew helped him out after he parked the car in their pit stall.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. will make another start in the Xfinity Series this year at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He’ll be hoping to show the same speed again, and this time make it to the end of the race.
He’ll also be hoping for a better all-around performance for his team. Besides Allgaier, who won, every one of his other cars failed to finish.
All three other JR Motorsports drivers – Josh Berry, Sam Mayer, and Brandon Jones – was involved in one single wreck on lap 168 of 300. Berry and Mayer initially made contact jostling on the straightaway before Berry pushed up the track in the corner, sending him and Mayer into the wall and collecting Jones who was running just behind the pair.
Both Berry and Mayer blamed the other for the incident, but both ended up out at the end of the race, and with their teammate needlessly involved. The incident also collected the No. 39 of Ryan Seig, but he was able to continue and ultimately finished sixth, a strong run for his RSS Racing team.
It wasn’t smooth sailing for Richard Childress Racing either. A few laps later on lap 218, Sheldon Creed moved up out of the corner, tagging regular season champion Austin Hill into the inside wall. Hill ended up 33rd, while Creed finished eleventh.
“A frustrating first night, but to walk out of it with a finish is a plus,” he said of his race.
“I mean, we’ll talk about it, he’s going to be extremely frustrated – which he should be,” Creed acknowledged of the incident with his teammate. “Obviously I didn’t mean to left-rear him off the corner there, we just kind of came together. So that’s on me, really. I’m on the bottom.”
“We’ll talk about it, and, if he feels like he needs to get me back, then he’ll do that and we’ll move on,” Creed concluded.
The race certainly shook up the Playoff picture. Justin Allgaier is locked in on the top of the leaderboard. John Hunter Nemechek and Cole Custer have large 65- and 39-point gaps to the cutline respectively. Austin Hill, Chandler Smith, and Daniel have 21-,18-, and 12-point advantages respectively, while Sammy Smith and Sheldon Creed are separated by five and four points.
On the other end, Jeb Burton is four points out, while Sam Mayer and Josh Berry trail by 14 and 24 points each after their wreck. Parker Kligerman leaves Bristol with 22 points to make up after a wheel bearing issue with the right-front wheel on lap 142 of 300. Kligerman entered the Playoffs in the worst points position of the twelve drivers, so issues like that are especially painful for his Big Machine Racing team.
The race featured six cautions, for of which were for cause. Teammate issues between the JR Motorsports and Richard Childress Racing teammates accounted for two. The others were two-car incidents in stages two and three involving Joe Graf Jr. being spun after a bump by Connor Mosack, and a tandem spin involving Josh Bilicki and Rajah Caruth.
The Xfinity Series returns for the second round of the Round of 12 of the Playoffs at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday, September 23rd.
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