After the loss of Noah Gragson following his monumental 2022 season, JR Motorsports was left with a huge hole to fill as far as wins go.
They filled this hole with none other than Brandon Jones, who we’ve already deemed a potential Greatest Bust of All Time here in Eyes on Xfinity and left the rest up to the veteran pairing of Justin Allgaier and Josh Berry while hoping that Sam Mayer develops quicker than we all expect him to.
All of this has culminated in exactly zero wins so far this season and that has plenty of fans worried. Is it warranted, though?
The best way to break it down is by driver, so we’ll start with the longest tenured of the four: Allgaier.
Allgaier has been the model of consistency for JRM in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, despite never winning it all himself. Since joining JRM in 2016, he’s never finished lower than seventh in the final standings of a season.
This year, he’s got more top fives than any of his counterparts. Allgaier’s notched four top fives in nine races and came home second at Las Vegas Motor Speedway earlier this year. Those aren’t bad numbers by any means, but when you look at where Allgaier’s placed himself as far as points go, it’s on par to be another great season. He currently sits at sixth after this past weekend at Talladega Superspeedway.
Allgaier is showing no signs of slipping and neither is his counterpart, Berry. Despite having to split a lot of time between Xfinity and the NASCAR Cup Series, Berry has still put out the best performance out of the four JRM drivers this season.
Berry has the same amount of top fives, but has been more consistent across the board, which has him in fifth place in the points standings. The short-track maestro has finished inside the top 10 at every track that isn’t a superspeedway and is due a win any day, much like Allgaier. Bottom line, if there is a problem at JRM, it isn’t one of these two.
Could it be the second-year driver Mayer, then? It could be, but if you look at the numbers, I’m not so sure. He’s one of the youngest drivers in the series and it feels like JRM is putting a lot of stock into him to be the future of the team for years to come. His results show why.
The 19-year-old Wisconsin native has one top five and three top 10s on the season so far. Plus, his race craft has improved 10-fold since last season. He’s become truly comfortable behind the wheel of the Xfinity cars and I think…
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