AVONDALE, Ariz. — Justin Allgaier has a complex relationship with Phoenix Raceway. The 1-mile oval is the site of his coronation as NASCAR Xfinity Series champion last fall, plus home to two of his 25 career victories. But it’s also the track that’s hosted some of his biggest heartbreaks, including a dominant performance that went south in the closing laps last spring.
Saturday, Allgaier added another finish into the latter category, with what seemed like an assured win transforming into a fifth-place result in an overtime restart in the GOVX 200. The 38-year-old veteran had led 130 of the 208 laps in the No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, but his more than one-second edge down the stretch evaporated with a late caution flag that set up the fateful two-lap dash to the end, swinging his Phoenix love-hate meter into the red.
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“I mean, I want to love this place,” said Allgaier, who has led 730 laps here — second only to Bristol Motor Speedway (1,174 led) on his career stat sheet. “I mean, I won a championship here. We’ve won races here. We’ve done all the right things here. I really want to love it, but it’s like golf. You’re one hole away from throwing your clubs in the water, and you hit a great approach shot to the green, and you’re like, ‘This is the greatest game in the world,’ right? Racing is the same way, and this race track is the same way. You come back here every time, thinking you’re going to do it differently or you’re going to do it better, or you’re going to do whatever, and stuff like that happens.
“So we have a running joke that, as the 7 team, we don’t make it easy. And Phoenix is the 7 car of the schedule right now for us.”
Allgaier had a willing loss-column sympathizer in Cup Series regular Alex Bowman, who led 50 laps but was on the receiving end of a squeeze play from eventual winner Aric Almirola’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota through the final set of corners. Bowman had sprung to the lead in the next-to-last lap when Allgaier washed up into Almirola on a dirty track, but his No. 17 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy was pressed into the outside retaining wall in sight of the checkered flag, and he wound up as the runner-up by 0.045 seconds in his first Xfinity Series start of the year.
WATCH: Last-lap contact sends Almirola to Victory Lane
Almirola called the move “warranted” in his post-race interview. Bowman’s reaction of disappointment was tempered by a level of understanding, given that a win was at stake.
“Yeah, he exited like we weren’t even there,” Bowman said of Almirola’s drift up the track. “So I get you gotta do what you gotta do to win the race. So that’s part of stock-car racing sometimes, and I think if I enter on the bottom (lane), I probably get shipped, and if I try to enter on the top (groove) just to have a chance at getting off the corner, and yeah, he just beat us. He was better than us, for sure, but just tried to sneak one away there.”
Allgaier appeared to be in cruise mode in the final stage, having put some distance on closest challengers Almirola and Bowman after the final pit cycle. When Nick Leitz’s crash on Lap 197 of a scheduled 200 slowed the field, his advantage fizzled as the field re-racked for the final restart.
Leitz walked over to Allgaier on pit road post-race to apologize for causing the yellow flag, a move that Allgaier appreciated.
“I mean, that’s a bad spot to be in, right?” Allgaier said. “Like, nobody wants to cause a caution. Nobody wants to be in that position, especially when the leader’s out front and got a two-second lead, or a second-and-a-half lead or whatever it is with three (laps) to go, but it’s just how this place is. We blew the left-rear tire in the spring last year with three laps to go or four laps to go. It’s just, the probability of a caution in that last five laps is really high, and you’ve got to know that. You hope it doesn’t happen when you’re leading. But you know, it’s how it goes.
“Like I said, I’m proud of our team. The team did everything I could ask for them to do. They brought a race car that was absolutely phenomenal. I think we showed that the middle part of the run. I don’t know that there was anybody that could hang with us.”
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