After his second win of the season at Michigan International Speedway on Aug. 17 and a seventh-place, 50-point day at Daytona International Speedway on Aug. 23, Justin Allgaier took a commanding 33-point lead over Cole Custer in the NASCAR Xfinity Series regular season point standings.
It’s the first time that Allgaier has led the regular season standings since 2018, and he leads all full-time Xfinity drivers in laps led (570), stage wins (13) and playoff points (23) this season.
It’s been another successful multi-win season for the long-time Xfinity veteran, but the year didn’t start out that way. Yes, Allgaier and the No. 7 team showed race-winning speed right out of the gate, but a flat tire (and subsequent crash) while leading at Phoenix Raceway and a last-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway were among the bad breaks that saw Allgaier record only four top 10s in the first 10 races.
“I think the beginning of the year was probably the hardest part for me,” Allgaier told Frontstretch prior to the Aug. 31 Darlington Xfinity race. “Because while we had speed, and we were doing all the right things … we just didn’t have the finishes to show for it. I mean, I think somebody said in the first 24 races, we had 17 races that had something happen, whether it was a penalty or crash or damage or not being there at the end of the race when we had such a fast race car. And I think that that’s been disappointing.”
A dominant win at Darlington in May was exactly what the doctor ordered for the team, and the pendulum has shifted ever since. Allgaier now has 11 top 10s in his last 13 starts (with crashes serving as the lone exceptions), and a 10th-place result at Darlington last Saturday marked his eighth consecutive top-10 finish.
Allgaier and the No. 7 team are back on track, and they’ve been firing on all cylinders since returning from the two-week Olympic break.
“The break for us after Indy [and] before Michigan was probably the best thing that had ever happened,” Allgaier said. “It let us recenter, get ourselves back to where we needed to be at and really put ourselves in good position for this playoff run.
“These last two races have just been phenomenal. I mean, to win in Michigan was great, but then to race like we did in Daytona — obviously at the end of the race, we only got back at seventh, but still, it was a solid, solid night for us. Like you said, we took the point lead by a pretty good…
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