Go back to January of this year.
Tell any NASCAR Xfinity Series driver that after 10 races, they’d be fifth in points.
They might not admit it, but I think any one of them would be satisfied — with one notable exception.
Justin Allgaier spent the bulk of last season second or third in points. He made the Championship 4.
When the dust settled, it was Cole Custer being crowned as champion. Allgaier looked on as the runner-up. It was the sixth time the Riverton, Ill., native finished second or third in the points. His first championship would have to wait at least one more year.
Enter 2024. At Daytona International Speedway, Allgaier’s season got off to a solid start. He led seven laps, collected points in both stages and brought the car home in the top 10. It wasn’t anything flashy, but he avoided a bad finish that can so easily happen at Daytona and left fourth in points.
The following weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Allgaier had a good run going. He again scored points in both stages. Coming to the overtime restart, he ran out of gas and crawled to pit road for fuel, finishing 28th. A good run gone bad. Before losing fuel, he was running fourth. The result was scoring 24 fewer points than he would’ve had he brought it home fourth.
Next up, Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Allgaier started in the back due to a tire issue in qualifying. Seventh in stage one, fourth in stage two. The team elected to run long during a green flag pit cycle, hoping to catch a lucky caution. It never came. He led 11 laps late in the going, but once he made the final pit stop, he was relegated to a 10th-place finish.
If you’ve followed the series this season, you remember what happened at Phoenix Raceway. He was dominant late in the going and led a total of 52 laps. He had extended his lead out to three seconds over Chandler Smith. With five laps to go, disaster struck.
“Not a lot of good emotions to be honest with you at the moment,” Allgaier said afterward.
Calm and collected, it seemed to be a matter of bad luck. Chalk it up to a fluke.
“I definitely had to have run something over,” Allgaier said. “Wear-wise, there is no way we were wearing the left rear far enough to do that.”
The flat tire caused Allgaier to spin and hit the wall hard, ending his day. A snooze-fest of a win turned into a 29th-place finish. This was a loss of 32 points compared…
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