Justin Allgaier and Cole Custer both clinched return trips to the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ Championship 4 field on the basis of points last weekend, with Allgaier’s ride at Martinsville Speedway playing out a little less dramatically than Custer’s in the emotionally charged Round of 8 finale.
For Custer, it’s the opportunity to claim back-to-back titles and give Stewart-Haas Racing a winning send-off. For Allgaier, it’s the chance to finish one rung better than Custer in a championship-race redux and to fulfill a dream he’s spent 14 Xfinity Series seasons chasing.
Allgaier and Custer will match wits with Round of 8 race winners AJ Allmendinger and Austin Hill in Saturday’s championship race (7 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Phoenix Raceway. Allgaier landed in the Championship 4 field for the fifth time in the last six seasons, and now that he’s there, the 38-year-old veteran has an expectation that he’ll be in contention.
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Part of that confidence stems from his most recent performances at Phoenix, a track where he’s won twice (2017, 2019). Last season, Allgaier wound up third after a two-lap overtime shuffle to decide the finale. This spring, the JR Motorsports driver led 52 laps and built a three-second lead before a left-rear tire failure sidelined his No. 7 Chevrolet with just five laps to go.
“I mean, if I have one race track on my calendar that’s circled, it’s this fall race — not only because it’s a good race track for us, but the way that the spring race ended,” Allgaier said post-race at Martinsville, where a fifth-place finish allowed him to advance by 35 points. “I mean, I left there fully dejected, knowing that we had the dominant car, and we walked out of there with a wrecked pile of junk and didn’t get to win the race. So to be able to leave here with a shot at it, knowing what we’re taking back next week, I have no doubt in my mind we’re going to have a great piece, and we’ll see what we can do.”
The journey to Phoenix was far from a smooth one. Allgaier won twice during the regular season to ascend to the top of the Xfinity Series standings, but a late slump that included a rough 30th-place result at Bristol Motor Speedway left him three points short of the regular-season title, which was snapped up by Custer.
Allgaier’s sour luck continued in the postseason’s opening round, with finishes of 36th at Kansas and 25th at Talladega. A seventh-place finish plus a bounty of stage points in the Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval helped him overcome an 18-point deficit and advance by just four points. His Round of 8 was far more comfortable — third at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, eighth at Homestead-Miami Speedway and ultimately fifth at Martinsville.
“I mean, you look at the way the first two races in the first round started, to be honest with you, I thought we were going to be sitting on the couch, not even be here to Martinsville,” Allgaier said. “To turn all of that around, to put ourselves in contention for not only a top four in the points but a championship, I mean, that’s what you eat, sleep and breathe for … these 10 months that we do this on the race track. So I’m proud of the effort.”