DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Since starting to race at age 5, Justin Allgaier has held a single goal: Contend to win races. That outlook changed somewhat over the last couple seasons, when he fought to finish in the top half of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series pack with a scrappy, single-car team.
“Not that we ran bad by any means, we still had some great finishes, some great weeks but as a competitor, but I saw a side of myself that I didn’t necessarily like,” Allgaier said Tuesday during NASCAR Media Day at Daytona International Speedway. “I wanted to be competitive again. I started doing some things in the way that I approached the race track that I didn’t like the way I was doing; just certain things that you get in a rhythm or a habit of, things that you look at and you just say, ‘I need to do something different.’ “
This year holds the potential to be vastly different. Faced with an uncertain future in the premier series, the 29-year-old Illinois native signed on with JR Motorsports in late October, landing one of the NASCAR XFINITY Series’ highest-profile rides.
The move puts Allgaier back into the series that he called a full-time home from 2009-2013, a span where he won three races and finished in the top five of the season standings three times.
“I think it puts me back in that position where I feel like I need to be at, personally and competitively,” Allgaier said. “Hopefully, we can go out there and be competitive on a weekly basis and go for wins and a championship. And if we can do that, I think that my personal pressures — or whatever you want to call it — that I put on myself kick in and make it even better.”
Allgaier first joined the Sprint Cup Series in late 2013, making his debut with car owner Harry Scott Jr., who had recently purchased the team’s assets from James Finch. But the 75-race tenure with newly formed HScott Motorsports produced just one top-10 finish and performances around the top-30 mark in the series standings.
The cumulative effect was a change in attitude.
“I wouldn’t say that you came to the race track knowing you couldn’t win, but you came to the race track knowing you had a serious uphill battle in front of you,” Allgaier said. “And not that that’s a bad thing. Sometimes when you get lax and say ‘OK, it’s going to be easy,’ and you have a fast race car and you’re going to dominate every week. That’s a bad thing, too. As a racer, we all put stressors on ourselves, and we have plateaus or milestones that we want to hit.”
Which is where JRM’s No. 7 Chevrolet ride comes in. Regan Smith guided the team — co-owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and managed by his sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller — to five victories over the last three seasons, placing in the top five of the series standings each year.
Allgaier said he’s already become better acquainted with his new team, watching portions of the Super Bowl with Earnhardt Miller’s family and racing against her daughter, Karsyn Elledge, in go-karts.
“Just very family-oriented, just a different feel,” Allgaier said of the JRM vibe. “I think that’s been the coolest part for me. They have a vision, they have a goal. They want to go to the race track and be competitive, and they do it very well and they’re great people. They’re very hands-on, and I think any time you have that — an owner who’s a racer and understands what the challenges are on track — all those pieces are only extras when it comes to going to the race track on a weekly basis.”