Fresh start in Round of 8 gives Allgaier chance to write a new script

KANSAS City, Kan. -- Justin Allgaier sits in second in the NASCAR Xfinity Series standings as the Round of 8 kicks off with Saturday’s Kansas Lottery 300 (3 p.m. ET on NBC/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Yet, the journey to that point has been quite up and down for the JR Motorsports driver in the past month alone.

"I think if you could have scripted our first round of the playoffs, you would have scripted it the exact opposite of how it went," Allgaier told NASCAR.com on Friday afternoon. The regular-season champion finished 32nd due to a crash in the Round of 12 opener at Richmond. Following a 15th-place finish at the Charlotte Roval, he was far from secure in moving on until a third-place effort at Dover. RELATED: Xfinity Series playoff standings | Who's in the Round of 8? "It was difficult because the frustration level obviously is high especially when you’ve done everything you can do in the regular season," Allgaier said. "We won races. We won the regular-season championship. We gained as many playoff points as we could and all that was gone. …We took the checkered flag (at Dover) and it was 'OK, we don’t want to be in that position again.' We looked at this off week of how do we be better for the remainder of these races and what do we do different." The 2018 season has been Allgaier's best to date – he has doubled his career win total in the series to 10 -- with five wins and career-highs in laps led (635) and top fives (16). This season is all in perspective for the 32-year-old Illinois native. "I went a stretch there for three, four years where we didn't win a race and I'm not even sure that disappointing would begin to cover what the feeling was like," Allgaier said. "To come around this year, to be with the team that I am with, to have the guys that I have on my car this year and to be in Victory Lane again all are huge contributing factors. Probably the most important part is to have my daughter (Harper) at the race track and my wife (Ashley), just seeing their faces in Victory Lane that really for me is what drives it home." RELATED: Full schedule for Kansas  Allgaier comes into Kansas with five top 10s in seven Xfinity starts here. The Round of 8 also features another 1.5-mile track in Texas and ISM Raceway at Phoenix – a track that will be reconfigured for the November race but Allgaier has won there before. "I'd like to win here at Kansas because then you don’t have to worry about Texas or Phoenix," Allgaier said. "It takes some of the pressure off. "For me, the 1.5-mile tracks has been — we have not run as well on the 1.5-mile tracks as we have on the short tracks. We’ve still been good. We’ve still led a lot of laps. … For us, the mindset is learn as much as we can at Kansas, learn as much as we can in Texas and try to understand what we need to be the best we can be. When we get to Phoenix, we’ve run really well at Phoenix over the course of my career there. Go there, do what we know how to do, hopefully go to Victory Lane, gain some bonus points and lock our way into Homestead." The veteran knows he has his work cut out for him in a field of tough competitors that includes points leader Christopher Bell, Cole Custer, Daniel Hemric, Matt Tifft, Austin Cindric and JR Motorsports teammates Elliott Sadler and Tyler Reddick. "I look at the competitors that I'm racing against and there is not anyone in the final 8 that shouldn’t be in the final 4 at Homestead," Allgaier said. "We are going to get rid of four cars but none of those guys deserve to be out. They all have run extremely well. I think if we can have a chance at Homestead, that's a big feat and I don't take that lightly."